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This scries of Books for Teachers be^an with the I 
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LECTURES 

ON THE 

Science and Art of Education. 

WITH OTHER LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 

BY THE liATE 

JOSEPH PAYNE. 

THE FIRST PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION IN 
THE COLLEGE OF PRECEPTORS, OF LONDON. 

BEADING CLUB EDITION. 
INDEXED BY HEADLINES, AND WITH FULL ANALYSES;. 

By C. W. BARDEEN. 





'' -M 1895 I? 



•^ ' 



SYRACUSE, N. Y. : 

C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER. 

1885. 



Copyright, 1885, by C. W, Bardken. 



u 



THE FOLLOWING BOOKS, 

FREQUENTLY REFERRED TO IN THIS VOLUME, MAY BE HAD 
OF THE PUBLISHER AT THE PRICES ANNEXED. 

Quick's "Essays on Educational Reformers," $ 1.50 

(See l)p. 61, 113, 129, 130, 183, 231, 242.) 

Wilson's "On Teaching Natural Science in Schools," 25 

(See pp. 140, 220.) 
Youman's " Culture demanded by Modern Life," 2,00 

(See pp. 62.) 
Youmanss's " First Book in Botany," 75 

" Second Book in Botany," 1.30 

(See pp. 218, 245.) 

Fitch's "Lectures on Teaching," 1,25 

(See p. 80.) 

Ascham's "The Schoolm aster, " Reprint .50 

(See pp. 123-128,) 

Krilsi's " Life and Work of Pestalozzi," 1.50 

(See pp. 231.) 

Rousseau's " Emile," in French. 1.00 

The Same, translated, 2 vols., 8vo, 10,00 

3 or 4 vols., 16mo, 5.00 

abridged, 1.00 

Peetalozzi's "Leonard and Gertrude," trans., abridged,... 1.00 

Address, C. W. BARDEEN. Syracuse. N. Y. 



IlsTDEX. 

{^Fiill Analyses will he found at the close of each chapter.) 

PAGE 

Preface -- iv 

Introduction, by the Rev. R. H. Quick. vi 

Obituary Notice - - - xii 

The Science and Art of Education 17 

The Theory or Science of Education.. 49 

The Practice or Art of Education 86 

Educational Methods 116 

Principles of the Science of Education... 156 

Theories of Teaching, with their Corresponding Practice 165 

The Importance of the Training of the Teacher 189 

The True Foundation of Object- Teaching. 211 

Pestalozzi: the Influence of his Principles and Practice on 

Elementary Education 328 

(See also pp. 130-137.) 
Froebel and the Kindergarten System of Elementary Educa- 
tion 254 



111 



PREFACE 

BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 



The wide adoption of this portion of Joseph Payne's 
addresses as a manual for Reading Circles among teach- 
ers, has led to frequent complaint that long paragraphs, 
repetitions, and different analyses at different times of 
the same subject, have made it difficult thoroughly to 
master the editions already published. 

Accordingly I have prepared this new edition with 
these features: 

(1) The pages are indexed by head lines, the left- 
hand giving the title of the lecture, and the right-hand 
giving the particular topic under discussion. 

(2) Each lecture is followed by a somewhat minute 
analysis, convenient not only for review, but for com- 
parison with treatments of the same subject in other 
lectures. 

It must be remembered that this volume was not 
prepared by the author as a text-book, but is simply a 
compilation of addresses and papers delivered at differ- 
ent times and under different circumstances. Hence 
the same truth is often repeated, not only in different 
expression, but with different application. Only by an 
intelligent comparison of these various statements can 
Prof. Payne's views be thoroughly understood; and for 
this comparison these analyses are almost indispensable. 

The central principle of Prof. Payne's system stands 
iv 



PREFACE. V 

out boldly, and is reiterated at every opportunity; that 
the pupil knows only what he has discovered for him- 
self, and that in this process of discovery the teacher is 
only a guide. A comparison of the analyses given will 
show how often this truth is stated, and how variously 

it is demonstrated. 

C. W. BARDEEN. 

Syracuse, April 15, 1885. 



INTEODUCTION, 

BY THE EEV. R. H. QUICK, AUTHOR OF "ESSAYS ON 
EDUCATIONAL REFORMERS," ETC. 



A few words of introduction seem necessary to tell 
the general reader wliat it concerns him to know about 
the author of this volume, and his practical acquaint- 
ance with education. 

At an early age Mr. Payne became an assistant in a 
London school; and, as he himself maintained, he 
would have fallen into the ordinary groove of routine 
teaching had he not accidentally become acquainted 
with the principles of the French reformer Jacotot, and 
been fired with the enthusiasm which Jacotot succeeded 
in kindling far and wide both in his own country and in 
Belgium. In England Mr. Payne was the first (in im- 
portance, if not in time) of Jacotot's disciples; and 
finding that the new principles entirely changed his 
notion of the teacher's office, and turned routine into a 
course of never-ending experiment and discovery, he 
forthwith set about preaching the new educational 
evangel. Though a very young man and with small 
resources, he published an account of Jacotot's system 
(1830), and gave public lectures to arouse teachers to a 
sense of its importance. The system interested a lady, 
who induced Mr. Payne to undertake the instruction of 
her own children: and this family became the nucleus 
of a large school under Mr. Payne's management at 
vi 



MR. PATNE AS A REFORMEE. Vll 

Denmark Hill. Some years afterwards, Mr. Payne es- 
tablished himself at the Mansion House, Letherhead, 
where he was still very successful as a schoolmaster, 
and where he acquired the means of retiring, after 
thirty years' work, from the profession. In his school- 
keeping, and in all his undertakings, even his studies, 
Mr. Payne was greatly assisted by his wife, a lady who 
had herself been engaged in education, and who entered 
into his pursuits with the sympathy of the intellect as 
well as of the heart, till she was called away, only a 
few months before her husband. Believing as I do that 
Mr. Payne's labors have had and will have a great influ- 
ence on education in this country, I feel bound to bear 
this testimony to her by whom he was so greatly assisted. 
We have seen that Mr. Payne became early in life an 
enthusiastic theorist. We most of us have our enthusi- 
asms when we are young, and teachers like other people, 
at first expect to do great things, and make great ad- 
vances on the practice of their predecessors. But as 
they grow older the enthusiasms die out. All sorts of 
concessions to use and wont are enforced upon them; 
and by degrees they find there is much to be said for 
the usual methods. These methods are, for the master 
of all events, the easiest ; and they have this great 
advantage, that they lead to the expected results. 
Changes might lead to unexpected results, and tliese 
would not find favor with parents. If we do well 
what other people are doing, and doing in some cases 
very badly, we shall please everybody; and why not be 
satisfied with that which satisfies our employers? In 
this way we find excuses for our failing energy, and by 
the time we have experience enough to judge what 



Vill INTRODUCTION. 

reforms are possible, we have settled down into indo- 
lent contentment with things as they are. To this law 
of the decay of enthusiasms Mr. Payne's career shows 
us a striking exception. In early life an interest in 
principles had changed his occu])ation from a dull 
routine to an absorbing intellectual pursuit, and as he 
went on he found that his study of theory instead of 
making him " unpractical " gave him great practical 
advantages. His pupils did not fail in ordinary ac- 
quirements; and their memory, even for Latin Gram- 
mar, was developed without any assistance from the 
cane. When I first became acquainted with Mr. Payne, 
he had retired from his school, and I do not know how 
far he succeeded in carrying out his principles. That 
they had constant influence over him, no one who knew 
him would for an instant doubt; but probably, like all 
high-minded men, he fell far short of his own ideal. 
But the more he taught himself and the more he had to 
direct other teachers, the stronger grew his conviction 
that education should be studied scientifically, that 
principles should direct practice, and further that the 
main cause of weakness in our school system lay in our 
teacher's ignorance of the nature of their calling, and 
of the main truths about it already established. The 
consequence was that when after many years of labor 
he found himself able to spend his remaining days as he 
chose, he set to work with an enthusiasm and energy 
and self-devotion rarely found even in young men, to 
arouse teachers to a sense of the4r deficiencies and to be 
a pioneer in the needed science of education. It was, I 
believe, mainly owing to his influence, and to that of 
his friend Mr. C. H. Lake, that the College of Precep- 



MR. Payne's avork. ix 

tors instituted an examination for teachers, the first 
held in the country. In 1872, the College took another 
important step, and appointed the first English Profes- 
sor of the Science and Art of Education. The Profes- 
sor appointed was Mr. Payne, and no man could have 
been found with higher qualifications. He had always 
been a diligent student, and had much wider culture 
than is usually found in schoolmasters, or indeed in any 
class of hardworked men, and his habits of reading and 
writing now gave him great advantages. But these 
would have been of little avail had he not possessed the 
main requisite for the professorship as few indeed pos- 
sessed it, viz., a profound belief in the present value 
and future possibilities of the Science of Education. 
No work could have been more congenial to him than 
endeavoring to awaken in young teachers that spirit of 
inquiry into principles, which he had found the salt of 
his own life in the schoolroom. And short as his tenure 
of the Professorship unhappily proved, he succeeded in 
his endeavor, and left behind him students who have 
learnt from him to make their practice as teachers more 
beneficial to others and infinitely more pleasurable to 
themselves, by investigating the theory which not only 
explains right practice, but also points out the way to it. 

That interest in education as a science and an art 
which was awakened by the delivery of Mr. Payne's 
lectures, will one day, I trust, be more widely spread by 
their publication. The papers in this volume have 
already appeared at diflPerent times, and they are now 
for the first time collected. But there are numerous 
lectures which still remain in MS. 

Mr. Payne always spoke of Jacotot as "his master," 



X INTRODUCTION. 

and in one of the paradoxes of Jacotot is contained the 
principle wliich takes the leading place in Mr. Payne's 
teaching Jacotot exposed himself to the jeers of 
schoolmasters by asserting that a teacher who under- 
stood his business could " teach what he did not know." 
By teacher is usually understood one who communicates 
knowledge. This meaning of the word, however, was 
unsatisfactory to Jacotot and to his English disciple. 
What is knowledge ? Knowledge is the abiding result 
of some action of the mind. Whoever causes the mind 
of pupils to take the necessary action teaches the pupils, 
and this is the only kind of teaching which Mr. Payne 
would hear of. Thus we see that Jacotot's paradox 
points to a new conception of the teacher''s function. 
The teacher is not one who "tells," but one who sets 
the learner's mind to work, directs it and regulates its 
rate of advance. In order to "tell," one needs nothing 
beyond a form of words which the pupils may repro- 
duce with or without comprehension. But to "teach," 
in Mr. Payne's sense of the word, a vast deal more was 
required, an insight into the working of the pupil's 
mind, a power of calling its activities into play, and of 
directing them to the needful exercise, a perception of 
results, and a knowledge how to render those results 
permanent. Such was Mr. Payne's notion of the teach- 
er's office, and this notion lies at the root of all that he 
said and wrote about instruction. It would be useless 
to attempt to decide how far the conception v/as origi- 
nal with him. " Everything reasonable has been thought 
already," says Goethe. Mr. Payne, as we have seen, 
was always eager to declare his obligations to Jacotot. 
The same notion of the teacher is found in the utter- 



JACOTOT S PARADOX. XI 

aaces of other men, especiall}' of Pestalozzi and Froebel* 
But when sue!) a conception becomes part and parcel of 
a mind like Mr. Payne's, it forthwith becomes a fresh 
force, and its influence spreads to others. 

To elevate the teacher's conception of his calling was 
the task to which Mr. Payne devoted the latter years of 
his life; but those who knew him best, desire to see 
his influence extended by this and other publications of 
his writings, that he may still be a worker in the cause 
which he had at heart. 

Januarij, 1880. . R H. QUICK. 



MR. JOSEPH PAYNE. 



The subjoined Obituary Notice appeared shortly after Mr. Payne's 
death, in the Educational Times for June 1st, 1876. 

It would be difficult to over-estimate the loss which 
the cause of educational progress and reform has sus- 
tained by the recent death of Mr. Joseph Payne. At 
the present juncture, when so great an impetus has been 
given to popular education, and such rapid strides are 
being taken, not always with the clearest light, or in the 
wisest direction, and when the guidance and influence of 
men of wide experience, careful thought, and untiring 
devotion, are more than ever necessary, few could be 
named whose place it would be more difficult to supply. 

Those who had the privilege of knowing Mr. Payne 
are aware that, both as a theorist and as a practical 
teacher, he had made it the business of his life to expose 
the futility of the unintelligent routine with which edu- 
cators have too commonly contented themselves, and to 
rouse teachers to replace it by methods which would call 
the expanding faculties of the young scholar into health- 
ful activity, which would promote and regulate their 
development by well-considered aisd sympathetic guid- 
ance, and would direct their action to the best and 
wisest ends. In short, he strove to make education a 
reality instead of a pretence. With this view he con- 
stantly insisted on the too often forgotten truth, that 
xii 



BIRTH AND EARLY EDUCATIOISr. XUI 

the only teaching that is worthy of the name is that 
which enables the learner to teach himself, that which 
awakens in him the desire for knowledge, and guides 
him by the surest and readiest methods to its attainment. 
Such teaching proceeds upon intelligent and scientific 
principles, and demands of the teacher something differ- 
ent from the hum-drum giving of routine lessons. As 
the obvious corollary of this, Mr. Payne urged upon 
teachers the necessity of mastering the true principles 
that should guide them in the exercise of their profes- 
sion, and of rousing themselves to the perception of the 
truth that the teacher must learn how to teach j' that he 
must not only know thoroughly and fundamentally that 
which he teaches, but must study well the laws which 
govern the exercise and development of the faculties of 
those whom he teaches; that he must know both the 
lesson and the scholar, and the means by which the two 
may be brought into fruitful contact. These aims Mr. 
Payne pursued throughout his life, unobtrusively in- 
deed, yet with single-minded enthusiasm, and unswerv- 
ing tenacity of purpose. 

Mr. Payne was born at Bury St. Edmund's on the 2d 
of March, 1808. His early education was very incom- 
plete, and it was not till he was about fourteen years 
old that, at a school kept by a Mr. Freeman, he came 
under the instruction of a really competent teacher. 
This advantage, however, he did not enjoy very long. 
At a comparatively early age he was under the necessity 
of getting his own living, which he did partly by teach- 
ing, partly by writing for the press. His life at this 
period was laborious, and not altogether free from pri- 
vations. He found time, however, for diligent study, 



XIV OBITUARY NOTICE. 

and numerous extract and common-place books testify 
to the wide range of his reading in the ancient classics 
and in English literature. 

When he was about twenty years of age he became a 
private tutor in the family of Mr. David Fletcher, of 
Camberwell. His exceptional aptitude for teaching, 
and his energetic devotion to study attracted the appi e- 
csiation and sympathy of the mother of his young pupils. 
The children of one or two neighbors were admitted to 
share the benefits of his instruction, and thus a small 
preparatory school sprang up. Under his zealous and 
able direction it increased in numbers and consideration, 
till it expanded into the important school known as 
^* Denmark Hill Grammar School," carried on in a fine 
old mansion (recently demolished) on Denmark Hill. 
Here, in partnership with Mr. Fletcher, he continued 
his labors for some years. 

In 1837 Mr. Payne married Miss Dyer, a lady w^ho 
was at the head of a girls' school of high repute, which 
she continued to carry on for some time. In her he had 
the happiness of obtaining, as the partner of his life, a 
lady of great energy of character, of tact and method 
in the conduct of affairs, and admirably suited to sym- 
pathize with him in the aims and ambitions of his life. 

Mr. Payne's connection with the school at Camber- 
well continued till the year 1845, when he established 
himself independently at the Mansion House, Lether- 
head. Here he labored with great energy and success 
for about eighteen years, his school taking rank as one 
of the very first private schools in this country. In 
1863, having acquired a modest competence, he with- 
drew from the active cares of his profession. None the 



HIS WORK FOE EDUCATION. XV 

less, however, did he continue to devote himself strenu- 
ously to the cause of educational progress. He took a 
lively and active interest in several of the most import- 
ant movements having this for their purpose, such (for 
example) as the " Women's Education Union," and the 
"Public Girls' School Company," the improvement of 
women's education having long been one of his most 
cherished objects. By lectures, and through the press, 
and by his active and energetic participation in the 
operations carried on by the College of Preceptors, he 
still zealously pursued the great object of his life — the 
advancement of education by the improvement of the 
methods, and the elevation of the character and status 
of the teacher. The Kindergarten system of Froebel 
was one in which he took a keen interest. He studied 
profoundly the methods and systems of all who have 
obtained celebrity as educators, and Pestalozzi and Jaco- 
tot had in him a warm admirer and an able expositor. 
When a Professorship of the Science and Art of Educa- 
tion (the first of its kind) was established by the College 
of Preceptors, he was unaminously elected to occupy 
that Chair. 

Throughout his life Mr. Payne was a hard student. 
Till but a few months before his death, he was wont to 
continue his work into the small hours of the morning. 
He was especially interested in the history of the devel- 
opment of the English language, and the characteristics 
of the different dialects, and more particularly in the 
history of the Norman-French element. This led him 
to a rather extensive study of the dialects of French, 
and the history of the French language generally. A 
paper of great value by him on these subjects appears 



XVI OBriUARY NOTICE. 

in the " Transactions of the Philological Society," of 
which he was one of the most distinguished and active 
members. 

Mr. Payne's life had been too laboriously occupied to 
leave time for the composition of any large literary 
works; but his little volume of "Select Poetry for 
Children " is one of the very best of its class, and his 
" Studies in English Prose," and " Studies in English 
Poetry," have met with a wide appreciation. Among 
various lectures and pamphlets published by him, may 
be mentioned: — "Three Lectures on the Science and 
Art of Education," delivered at the College of Pre- 
ceptors in 1871. "The True Foundation of Science 
Teaching," a lecture delivered at the College of Pre- 
ceptors in 1872. " The Importance of the Training of 
the Teacher." " The Science and Art of Education," an 
introductory lecture delivered at the College of Precept- 
ors. "Pestalozzi," a lecture delivered at the College of 
Preceptors in 1875. " Froebel and the Kindergarten 
System," a lecture delivered at the College of Precept- 
ors. " The Curriculum of Modern Education." 

The death of his wife, which occured in the autumn 
of last year, probably aggravated the symptoms of a 
malady of some standing, which terminated on April 
30th, 1876, a life of singular purity and nobleness of 
aim, of strenuous and unintermitting industry, and of 
unselfish devotion to high and worthy ends. 



THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 



* 



At the beginning of last year, I delivered in this room 
a lecture intended to inaugurate the Course of Lectures 
and Lessons on the Science and Art of Education, which 
the Council of the College of Preceptors had appointed 
me to undertake. The experiment then about to be 
tried was a new one in this country; for, although we 
have had for some years Colleges intended to prepare 
Elementary Teachers for their work, nothing of the kind 
existed for Middle Class and Higher Teachers. As I 
stated in that Inaugural Lecture, the Council of the 
College of Preceptors, after waiting in vain for action 
on the part of the Government or of the Universities, 
and attempting, also in vain, to obtain the influential 
co-operation of the leading scholastic authorities in aid 
of their object, resolved to make a beginning themselves. 
They therefore adopted a scheme laid before them by 
one of their colleagues — a lady — and offered the First 
Professorship of the Science and Art of Education to me. 

We felt that some considerable difficulties lay in the 
way of any attempt to realize our intentions. Among 
these, there were two especially on which I will dwell 
for a few minutes. The first was, the oj)inion very gen- 
erally entertained in this country, that there is no 
Science of Education, that is, that there are no fixed 

* Au Introductory Lecture delivered at the College of Preceptors, on 
the 20th January, 1874. 
B 32 



18 THE SCIENCE AJSTD ART OF EDUCATION". 

principles for the guidance of the Educator's practice. 
It is generally admitted that there is a Science of Medi- 
cine, of Law, of Theology; but it is not generally 
admitted there is a corresponding Science of Education. 
The opinion that there is no such Science was, as we 
know, courageously uttered by Mr. Lowe, but we also 
know that there are hundreds of cultivated professional 
men in England, who silently maintain it, and are prac- 
tically guided by it. These men, many of them distin- 
guished proficients in the Art of teaching, if you venture 
to suggest to them that there must be a correhited Sciene& 
which determines — whether they are conscious of it or 
not — the laws of their practice, generally by a signifi:- 
cant smile let you know their opinion both of the subject 
and of yourself. If they deign to open their lips at all„ 
it is to mutter something about " Pedagogy," ^' frothy 
stuff," " mere quackery,"* or to tell you point-blank that 
if there is such a Science, it is no business of theirs: 
they do very well without it. This opinion, which they 
no doubt sincerely entertain, is, however, simply the 
product of thoughtlessness on their part. If they had 
carefully considered the subject in relation to themselves 
— if they had known the fact tliat the Science which 
they disclaim or denounce has long engaged the atten- 
tion of hundreds of the profoundest thinkers of Ger- 
many — many of them teachers of at least equal standing 
to their own — who have reverently admitted its preten- 

*It is remarkable that the dictionary meaning of "quack" is *• a 
boastful pretender to arts he does not understand," so that the asserter 
of principles as the foundation of correct practice isignorantly denounced 
as weak on the very point which constitutes his strengh. One may imag- 
ine the shouts of laughter with which such a denunciation would be 
receivedjn an assembly of German experts in education. 



IS THERE StTCH A SCIENCE ? 1 9 

sions, and devoted their great powers of mind to the 
investigation of its laws, they would, at least, have 
given you a respectful hearing. But great, as we know, 
is the power of ignorance, and it wil] prevail — for a 
time. There are, however, even now, hopeful signs 
which indicate a change of public opinion. Only a 
week ago, a leader in the Times called attention to Sir 
Bartle Frere's conviction expressed in one of his lectures 
in Scotland, that "the acknowledged and growing 
power of Germany is intimately connected with the 
admirable education which the great body of the 
German nation are in the habit of receiving." The edu- 
cation of which Sir Bartle Frere thus speaks, is the 
direct result of that very science which is so generally 
unknown, and despised, because unknown, by our culti- 
vated men, and especially by many of our most eminent 
teachers. When this educated power of Germany, 
which has already shaken to its centre the boasted mili- 
tary reputation of France, does the same for our boasted 
commercial reputation, as Sir Bartle Frere and others 
declare that it is even now doing, and for our boasted 
engineering reputation, as Mr. Mundella predicts it will 
do, unless we look about us in time, the despisers of the 
Science of education will adopt a different tone, and 
perhaps confess themselves in error; at all events, they 
will betake themselves to a modest and respectful silence. 
No later^back than yesterday (January 19) the Times con- 
tained three letters bearing on Sir Bartle Frere's asser- 
tion that the increasing commercial importance of 
Germany is due mainly to the excellence of German 
education. One writer refers to the German Realschulen 
or Thing-Schools and to the High Schools of Commerce, 



20 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

in both of which the practical study of matters bearing 
on real life is conducted. Another writer, an Ex-Chair- 
man of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, says, — " I 
have no hesitation in stating that young Germans make 
the best business men, and the reason is, that they are 
usually better educated; I mean by this, they have a 
more thorough education, which imparts to them accu- 
racy and precision. Whatever they do is well and 
accurately done, no detail is too small to escape their 
attention, and this engenders a iiabit of thought and 
mind, which in after life makes them shrewd and thor- 
ough men of business. I think the maintenance of our 
commercial superiority is very much of a schoolmaster's 
question." A third writer speaks of the young German 
clerks sent out to the East as "infinitely superior" in 
education to the class of young men sent out from Eng- 
land, and ends by saying, " Whatever be the cause, 
there can be no question that the Germans are outstrip- 
ping us in the race for commercial superiority in the far 
East." 

Some persons, no doubt, will be found to cavil at 
these statements; the only comment, however, I think it 
necessary to make is this — " Germany is a country 
where the Science of Education is widely and pro- 
foundly studied, and where the Art is conformed to the 
Science." I leave you to draw your own inferences. 
Without, however, dwelling further on this important 
matter, though it is intimately connected with my pur- 
pose, I repeat that this dead weight of ignorance in the 
public mind respecting the true claims of the Science of 
Education, constitutes one of the difficulties with which 
we have had to contend. The writer of a leading arti- 



TEACHERS TOO SELF-CONTENTED. 21 

cle in the Times, January 10, said emphatically, "In 
truth, there is nothing in which the mass of Englishmen 
are so much in need of education as in appreciating the 
value of Education itself." These words contain a 
pregnant and melancholy truth, which will be more and 
more acknowledged as time moves on. 

But there was another difficulty of scarcely less import- 
ance with which we had to contend, and this is the con- 
viction entertained by the general body of teachers that 
they have nothing to learn about Education. We are now 
descending, be it remembered, from the leaders to the 
great band of mere followers, from the officers of the 
army to the rank and file. My own experience, it may 
well be believed, of teachers, has been considerable. As 
the net result of it, I can confidently affirm that until I 
commenced ray class in February last, I never came in 
contact with a dozen teachers who were not entirely 
satisfied with their own empirical methods of teaching. 
To what others had written on the principles of Educa- 
tion, — to what these had reduced to successful practice, 
— they were, for the most part, profoundly indifferent. 
To move onward in the grooves to which they had been 
accustomed in their school days, or if more intelligent, 
to devise methods of their own, without any respect to 
the experience, however enlightened, of others, was, and 
is, the general practice among teachers. For them, 
indeed, the great educational authorities, whether writers 
or workers, might as well never have existed at all. In 
short, to repeat what I said before, teachers, as a class 
(there are many notable exceptions), are so contented 
with themselves and their own methods of teaching that 
they complacently believe, and act on the belief, that 



22 THE SCIENCE AND AKT OF EDUCATION. 

they have nothing at all to learn from the Science and 
Art of Education ; and this is much to be regretted for 
their own sakes, and especially for the sake of their 
pupils, whose educational health and well-being lie in 
their hands. However this may be, the fact is unques- 
tionable, that one of the greatest impediments to any 
attempt to expound the principles af Education lies in 
the unwarrantable assumption on the part of the teachers 
that they have nothing to learn on the subject. Here, 
however, as is often the case, the real need for a remedy 
is in inverse proportion to the patient's consciousness of 
the need. The worst teachers are generally those who 
are most satisfied with themselves, and their own small 
performances. 

The fallacy, not yet displaced from the mind of the 
public, on which this superstructure of conceit is raised, 
is that '' he who knows a subject can teach it." The 
postulate, that a teacher should thoroughly know the 
subject he professes to teach, is by no means disputed, 
but it is contended that the question at issue is to be 
mainly decided by considerations lying on the pupil's 
side of it. The process of thinking, by which the pupil 
learns, is essentially his own. The teacher can but stim- 
ulate and direct, he cannot supersede it. He cannot do 
the thinking necessary to gain the desired result for his 
pupil. The problem, then, that he has to solve is how 
to get his pupil to learn ; and it is evident that he may 
know the subject without knowing the best means of 
making his pupil know it too, which is the assumed end 
of all his teaching. He may be an adept in his subject, 
but a novice in the art of teaching it — an art which has 
principles, laws, and processes peculiar tO' itself. 



SCHOLARSHIP i:nsufficient. 23 

But, again : a man, profoundly acquainted with a 
subject, may be unapt to teach it by reason of the very 
height and extent of his knowledge. His mind habitu- 
ally dwells among the mountains, and he has, therefore, 
small sympathy with the toiling plodders on the plains 
below. The difficulties which beset their path have long 
ceased to be a part of his own experience. He cannot 
then easily condescend to their condition, place himself 
alongside of them, and force a sympathy he cannot nat- 
urally feel with their trials and perplexities. Both 
these cases tend to the same issue, and show that it is 
fallacy to assert that there is any necessary connection 
between knowing a subject and knowing how to teach it. 
Our experiment was commenced on the 6th of Feb- 
ruary last. On the afternoon of that day, only seven- 
teen teachers had given in their names as meml^rs of 
the class that was to be formed. In the evening, how- 
ever, to my surprise, I found no fewer than fifty-one 
awaiting the lecture. This number was increased in a 
few weeks to seventy, and on the whole, there have been 
eighty members in the course of a year. Having 
brought our little history down to the commencement of 
the lectures in 1873, I propose to occupy the remainder 
of our time with a brief account of what was intended, 
and what has been accomplished by them. 

Generally speaking, the intention was to show (1) that 
there is a Science of Education, that is, that there arj 
principles derived from the nature of the mind which 
furnish laws for the educator's guidance ; (2) that there 
is an Art founded on the Science, which will be efficient 
or inefficent in proportion to the educator's conscious 
knowledge of its principles. 



24 THE SCIENCE AND AET OF EDUCATION. 

It will be, perhaps, remembered by some now present, 
that I gave in my Inaugural Lecture a sketch of ihe man- 
ner in which I intended to treat these subjects. As, 
however, memories are often weals, and require to be hu- 
mored, and as repetition is the teacher's sheet-anchor, I 
may, perhaps, be excused if I repeat some of the matter 
then brought forward, and more especially as I may cal- 
culate that a large proportion of my audience were not 
present last year. 

I had to consider how I should treat the Science of 
Education, especially in relation to such a class as I was 
likely to have. It was to be expected that the class 
would consist of young teachers unskilled in the art of 
teaching, and perhaps even more unskilled in that of 
thinking. Such in fact they, for the most part, proved 
to be. Now the Science of Education is a branch of 
Psychology, and both Education and Psychology, as 
sciences, may be studied either deductively or induct- 
ively. We may commence with general propositions, 
and work downward to the facts they represent, or up- 
ward from the facts to the general propositions. To 
students who had been mainly occupied with the con- 
crete and practical, it seemed to me much better to 
commence with the concrete and practical ; with facts, 
rather than with abstractions. But what facts ? That 
was the question. There is no doubt that a given art 
contains in its practice, for eyes that can truly see, the 
principles which govern its action. The reason for do- 
ing may be gathered from the doing itself. If, then, 
we could be quite sure beforehand that perfect speci- 
mens of practical teaching based on sound principles, 
were accessible, we might have set about studying them 



NOT TO BE iEVOL\^ED FEOM PRACTICE. 25 

carefully, Avith a view to elicit the principles which un- 
derlie the practice, and in this way we might have ar- 
rived at a Science of Education. But then this involves 
the whole question — Who is to guarantee dogmatically 
the absolute soundness of a given method of teaching, 
and if any one comes forward to do this, who is to guar- 
antee the soundness of his judgment ? 

It appears, then, that although we might evolve the 
principles of medicine from the general practice of 
medicine, or the principles of engineering from the gen- 
eral practice of engineering, we cannot evolve the prin- 
ciples of education from the general practice of education 
as we actually find it. So much of that practice is radically 
and obviousl}'' unsound, so little of sequence and co-ordi- 
nation is there in its parts, so aimless generally is its 
action, that to search for the Science of Education in its 
ordinary present practice would be a sheer waste of 
time. We should find, for instance, the same teacher 
acting one day, and with regard to one subject, on one 
principle, and another day, or with regard to another" 
subject, on a totally different principle, all the time for- 
getting thaf^he mind really has but one method of 
learning so as really to know^^ though multitudes of 
methods may be framed for giving the semblance of 
knowino;. We see one teacher who is never satisfied un- 
til he secures his pupils' possession of clear ideas upon a 
given subject ; another who will let them go off with 
confused and imperfect ideas ; and a third, who will 
think his duty done when he has stuffed them with mere 
words — with husks instead of grain. It is then perfect- 
ly clear that we cannot deduce the principles of true 
science from varying practice of this kind ; and if we 



26 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

confine ourselves to inferences drawn from such prac- 
tice, we shall never know what the Science of Educa- 
tion is. Having thus shut ourselves off from dealing 
with the subject by the high «j9nor? method, commenc- 
ing with abstract principles, and also from the unsatis- 
factory method of reference founded on various, but 
generally imperfect, practice ; and being still resolved, 
if possible, to get down to a solid foundation on which 
we might build a frabric of science, we were led to in- 
quire whether any system of education is to be found, 
constant and consistent in its working, by the study of 
which we might reach the desired end. On looking 
round we saw that there u such a system continually at 
work under our very eyes, — one which secures definite 
results, in the shape of positive knowledge, and trains 
to habit the powers by which these results are gained, 
— which cannot but be consistent with the general na- 
ture of things, because it is Nature^s own. Here, then, 
we have what we were seeking for — a system working 
harmoniously and consistently towards a definite end, 
and securing positive results — a system, too, strictly 
educational, whether we regard the development of the 
faculties employed, or the acquisition of knowledge, as 
accompanying the development — a system in which the 
little child is the Pupil and Nature the educator. 

Having gained this stand-point, and with it a convic- 
tion that if we could only understand this great educa- 
tor's method of teaching and see the true connection 
between the means he employs and the end he attains, 
we should get a correct notion of what is really meant 
by education ; we next inquire, *' How are we to proceed 
for this purpose?" The ^answer is, by the method 



INVESTIGATION OF NATUEE's SYSTEM. 27 

through which other truths are ascertained — by investi- 
gation. AVe must do what the chemist, the physician, 
the astronomer do, when they study their respective sub- 
jects. We must examine into the facts, and endeavor 
to ascertain, first, what they are ; secondly, what they 
mean. The bodily growth of the child from birth is, for 
instance, a faot, which we can all observe for ourselves. 
What does it mean ? It means that, under certain 
external influences — such as air, light, food — the child 
increases in material bulk and in physical power ; that 
these influences tend to integration, to the forming of a 
whole; that they are all necessary for that purpose; that 
the withholding of any one of them leads to disintegra- 
tion or the breaking up of the whole. But as we con- 
tinue to observe, we see, moreover, evidences of mental 
growth. We witness the birth of consciousness ; we see 
the mind answering, through the sense, to the call of the 
external world, and giving manifest tokens that impres- 
sions are both received and retained by it. The child 
" takes notice " of objects and actions, manifests feelings 
of pleasure or pain in connection with them and indi- 
cates a desire or will to deal in his own w^ay with the 
objects, and to take part in the actions. We see that 
this growth of intellectual power, shown by his increas- 
ing ability to hold intercourse with things about him, is 
closely connected with the growth of his bodily powers, 
and we derive from our observation one important prin- 
ciple of the Science of Education, that mind and body are 
mutually interdependent, and co-operate in promoting growth. 

We next observe that as the baby, under the com- 
bined influences of air, light, and food, gains bodily 
strength, he augments that strength by continually exer- 



28 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

cising it ; he uses the fund he has obtained, and by 
using, makes it more. Exercise reiterated, almost unre- 
mitting ; unceasing movement, apparently for its o^A^n 
sake, as an end in itself ; the jerking and wriggling in 
the mother's arms, the putting forth of his hands to 
grasp at things near him, the turning of the head to look 
at bright objects ; this exercise, these movements, con- 
stitute his very life. He lives in them, and by them. 
He is urged to exercise by stimulants from without; but 
the exercise itself brings pleasure with it {Jahor ipsevolup- 
tas), is continued on that account, and ends in increase 
of power. What applies to the body, applies also, by 
the foregoing principle, to the intellectual powers, which 
grow with the infant's growth, and strengthen with his 
strength. Our observation of these facts furnishes us, 
therefore, with a second principle of education— i^«6M% 
of whatever kind ^rows hi/ exercise. Without changing our 
ground we supplement this principle by another. We 
see that the great educator who prompts the baby to 
exercise, and connects pleasure with all his voluntary 
movements, makes the exercise effectual for the purpose 
in view by constant reiteration. Perfection in action is 
secured by repeating the action thousands of times. The 
baby makes the s;ime movements over and over again ; 
the muscles and the nerves learn to work together, and 
habit is the result. Similarly in the case of the mind, 
the impressions communicated through the organs of 
sense grow from cloudy to clear, from obscure to defi- 
nite, by dint of endless repetition of the functional act. 
By the observation of these facts we arrive at a third 
principle of education : — Mxercise involves repetition, which, as 
regards hodily actions, ends in hahits of action, and as regards 



PRINCIPLES LEARNED FROM NATURE. 29 

impressions received by the mind, ends m clearness of perceptmi. 

Looking still at our baby as lie pursues his education, 
we see that this manifold exercise is only apparently an 
end in itself. The true purpose of the teaching is to 
stimulate the pupil to the acquisition of knowledge, and 
to make all these varied movements subservient to that 
end. This exercise of faculty brings the child into 
contact with the properties of matter, initiates him into 
the mysteries of hard and soft, heavy and light, etc., 
the varieties of form, of round and flat, circular and 
angular, etc., the attractive charms of color. 

All this is knowledge gained by reiterated exercise 
of the faculties, and stored, up in the mind by its reten- 
tive power. We recognize the baby as a practical 
inquirer after knowledge for its own sake. But we 
further see him as a discoverer, testing the properties of 
matter by making his own experiments upon it. He 
knocks the spoon against the basin which contains his 
food; he is pleased with the sound produced by his 
action, and more than pleased, delighted, if the basin 
breaks under the operation. He throws his ball on the 
ground, and follows its revolution with his enraptured 
eye. What a wonderful experiment it is ! How 
charmed he is with the effect he has produced! He 
repeats the experiment over and over again with un- 
wearied assiduity. The child is surely a ISTewton, or a 
Farady, in petticoats. No, he is simply one of nature's 
ordinary pupils, inquiring after knowledge, and gaining 
it by his own unaided powers. He is teaching himself, 
under the guidance of a great educator. His self-teach- 
ing ends in development and growth, and it is therefore 
strictly educational in its nature. In view of these facts 



30 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

we gain a fourth principle of the Science of Education. 
The exercise of the child'' s own powers, stimulated hut not super- 
seded hy the educator''s interference, ends loth in the acquisition 
of knowledge and in the invigoration of the powers for further 
acquisition. 

It is unnecessary to give further ilhistrations of our 
method. Every one will see that it consists essentially 
in the observation and investigation of facts, the most 
important of which is that we have before us a pupil 
going through a definite system of education. We are 
convinced that it is education^ because it develops fac- 
ulty, and therefore conduces to development and growth. 
By close observation we detect the method of the master, 
and see that it is a method which repudiates cramming 
rules and definitions, and giving wordy explanations, and 
secures the pupil's utmost benefit from the work by 
making him do it all himself through the exercise of his 
unaided powers. We thus get a clue to the construction 
of a Science of Education, to be built up, as it were, on 
the organized compound of body and mind, to which we 
give the name of baby. Continuing still our observa- 
tion of the phenomena it manifests, first, in its speech- 
less, and afterwards in its speaking condition, we gain 
other principles of education; and lastly, collegating and 
generalizing our generalizations, we arrive at a defini- 
tion of education as carried on by Nature. This may 
be roughly expressed thue : — Natural education cotisists in 
the development and training of the learner'' s powers, through in- 
fluences of various hinds, which are initiated ly action from 
without, met hy corresponding reaction from within. 

Then assuming, as we apj^ear to have a right to do, 
that this natural education should be the model or type 



Er>TJCATION DEFINED. 31 

'-^f formal education, we somewbat modify our definition 
thus — 

Education is the developnent and training of the learner^ 
native powers hy means of instruction carried on through the 
conscious and persistent agency of the formal educator, and de- 
pends upon the established connection between the world without 
and the world within the mind — between the objective and the 
subjective. 

I am aware that this definition is defective, inasmuch 
as it ignores — or appears to ignore — the vast fields of 
physical and moral education. It will, however, serve 
my present purpose, which is especially connected with 
intellectual education. 

Having reached this point, and gained a general 
notion of a Science of Education, we go on to consider 
the Art of Education, or the practical application of the 
Science. We are thus led to examine the difference 
between Science and Art, and between Nature and^ Art. 
Science tells us what a thing is, and why it is what it is. 
It deals therefore with the nature of the thing, with its 
relations to other things, and consequently with the laws 
of its being. Art derives its rules from this knowledge 
of the thing and its laws of action, and says, "Do this 
or that with the thing in order to accomplish the end 
you have in view. If you act otherwise with it, you 
violate the laws of its being." Now the rules of Art 
may be carried out blindly or intelligently. If blindly, 
the worker is a mere artisan — an operative who follows 
routine, whose rule is the rule-of -thumb. If intelligent- 
ly, he is a true artist, who not only knows what he is 
doing, but why this process is right and that wrong, and 
who is furnished with resources suitable for guiding 



32 THE SCIENCE AND ART OP EDUCATION. 

normal, and correcting abnormal, action. All the opera- 
tions of the true artist can be justified by reference to 
the principles of Science. But there is also a correlation 
between Nature and Art. These terms are apparently, 
but not really, opposed to each other. Bacon long ago 
pointed out the true distinction when he said, Ars est 
Somo additus Naturce — Art is Nature with the addition of 
Man — Art is Man's work added to (not put in the place 
of) Nature's work. Here then is the synthesis of Nature 
and Man which justifies us in saying that natural educa- 
tion is the type or model of formal, or what we usually 
call, without an epithet, education, and that the Art of 
Teaching is the application by the teacher of laws of 
Science,which he has himself discovered by investigating 
Nature. This is the key-stone of our position ; if this 
is firm and strong, all is firm and strong. Abandon this 
position and you walk in darkness and doubt, not know- 
ing what you are doing or whither you are wandering 
— at the mercy of every wind of doctrine. 

The artist in education, thus equipped, is ready not 
only to work himself, but to judge of the work of others. 
He sees, for instance, a teacher coldly or sternly demand- 
ing the attention of a little child to some lesson, say in 
arithmetic. The child has never been led up gradually 
to the point at which he is. He has none but confused 
notions about it. The teacher, without any attempt to 
interest the child, without exhibiting affection or sym- 
pathy towards him, hastily gives him some technical 
directions, and sends him away to profit by them as he 
may — simply " orders him to learn," and leaves him to 
do so alone. Our teacher says, — "This transaction is 
inartistic. The element of humanity is altogether want- 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS. 33 

ing in it. It is not in accordance with the Science of 
Education; it is a violation of the Art. The great edu- 
cator, in his teaching, presents a motive and an object 
for voluntary action; and therefore excites attention 
towards the object by enlisting the feelings in the 
inquiry. He does not, it is true, show sympathy, because 
he acts by inflexible rules. But the human educator, as 
an artist, is bound not only to excite an interest in the 
work, but to sympathize with the worker. This teacher 
does neither. His practice ought to exemplify the for- 
mula, Ar8=Natura-\Somo. He leaves out both Natura 
and Homo. His Ars therefore=0." 

Another case presents itself. Here the teacher does 
not leave the child alone; on the contrary, is continually 
by his side. At this moment he is copiously " impart- 
ing his knowledge " of some subject to his pupil, whose 
aspect show3 that he is not receiving it, and who there- 
fore looks puzzled. The matter, whatever it is, has evi- 
dently little or no relation to the actual condition of the 
child's mind, in which it finds no links of association and 
produces no intellectual reaction, and which therefore 
does not co-operate wdth the teacher's. He patiently 
endures, however, because he cannot escape from it, the 
downpouring of the teacher's knowledge ; but it is 
obvious that he gains nothing from it. It passes over 
his mind as water passes over a duck's back. Tlie sub- 
ject of instruction, before unknown, remains unknown 
still. Our artist teacher, looking on, pronounces that 
this teaching is inartistic, as not being founded on Sci- 
ence. " The efticiency of a lesson is to be proved," he 
says, "by the part taken in it by the pupii; and here 
the teacher does all the work, the pupil does nothing at 



34 TiBtE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDtTCATIOK. 

all. It is the teacher's miiidj DOt the learner's that is 
engaged in it. Our great master teaches by calling into 
exercise the learner^s powers, not by making a display of 
his own. The child will never learn anything so as to 
possess it for himself by such teaching as this, which 
accounts the exercise of his own faculties as having little 
or nothing to do with the process of learning." 

Once more; our student, informed in the Science of 
Education, watches a teacher who is giving a lesson on 
language — say, on the mother tongue. This mother 
tongue the child virtually knows how to use already; 
and if he has been accustomed to educated society, 
speaks and (if he is old enough to write) writes it cor- 
rectly. The teacher puts a book into his band, the first 
sentence of which is, "English grammar is the art of 
speaking and writing the English language correctly." 
Tiie child does not know what an "art" is, nor what is 
meant by speaking English " correctly." If he is intel- 
ligent he wonders whether he speaks it " correctly " or 
not. As to the meaning of " art," he is altogether at 
sea. The teacher is aware of the perplexity, and desir- 
ing to make him really understand the meaning of the 
word, attempts an explanation. "An art," he says (get- 
ting the definition from a dictionary), " is a power of 
doing something not taught by Nature." The child 
stares with astonishment, as if you were talking Greek 
or Arabic. What can be meant by a "power" — what 
by " being taught by Nature " ? The teacher sees that 
his explanation has only made what was dark before 
darker still. He attempts to explain his explanation, 
and the fog grows thicker and thicker. At last he gives 
it up, pronounces the child stupid, and ends by telling 



PEA.CTICAL APPLICATIONS. 35 

him to leai'n by rote — that is, by hurdy-gurdy grind — 
the unintelligible words. That at least the child can do 
(a parrot could be taught to do the same), and he does 
it; but his mind has received no instruction whatever 
from the lesson — the intelligence which distinguishes 
the child from the parrot remains entirely uncultivated. 
Our teacher proceeds to criticise, "This is," he says, 
"altogther inartistic teaching." Our great master does 
not begin with definitions — and indeed gives no defini- 
tions — because they are unsuited to the pupil's state of 
mind. He begins with facts which the child can under- 
stand, because he observes them himself. This teacher 
should have begun with facts. The first lesson in Gram- 
mar (if indeed it is necessary to teach Grammar at all to 
a little child) should be a lesson on the names of the ol- 
jects in the room — objects which the child sees and hand- 
les, and knows by seeing . and handling — that is, has 
ideas of them in his mind. "What is the name of this 
thing and of that ?" he inquires, and the child tells him. 
The ideas of the things, and the names by which they 
are known, are already associated together in his con- 
sciousness, and he has already learned to translate things 
into words. The teacher may tell him (for he could not 
discover it for himself) that a name may also be called a 
noun. " What then," the teacher ihay say, " is a noun ? " 
The child replies, "^ noun is the name of a thing.'''' He has 
constructed a definition himself — a very simple one cer- 
tainly — but then it is a definition which he thoroughly 
understands because it is his own work. This mode of 
proceeding would be artistic, because in accordance with 
Nature. There would be no need to commit the defini- 
tion to memory, as a mere collection of words, because 



•obsei 



36 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

what it means is already committed to the understand- 
ing which will retain it, because it represents facts al- 
ready known and appreciated. Thoroughly knowing 
things is the sure way to remember them." 

In some such way as this our expert brings the pro- 
cesses commonly called teaching to the touchstone of 
his Science, the Science which he has, built up on his 
observation of the processes of Nature. 

am afraid that, in spite of my illustrations, I may 
still have failed to impress you as strongly as I wish to 
do with the cardinal truth, that you cannot get the best 
results of teaching unless you understand the mind with 
which you have to deal. There are, indeed, teachers 
endowed with the power of sympathizing so earnestly 
with children, that in their case this sympathy does the 
work of knowledo^e, or rather it is knowledge uncon- 
sciously exercising the power proverbially attributed to 
it. The intense interest they feel in their work almost in- 
stinctively leads them to adopt the right way of doing it. 
They are artists without knowing that they are artists. 
But, speaking generally, it will be found that the only 
truly efficient director of intellectual action is one who 
understands intellectual action — that is, who under- 
stands the true nature of the mind which he is directing. 
It is this demand which we make on the teacher that 
constitutes teaching as a psychological art, and which 
renders the conviction inevitable that an immense num- 
ber of those who practise it do so without possessing the 
requisite qualifications. They undertake to guide a ma- 
chine of exquisite capabilities, and of the most delicate 
construction, without understanding its construction or 
the range of its capabilities, and especially without un- 



TEACHING A PSYCHOLOGICAL ART. 37 

derstanding the fiiDdameiital principles of the science of 
mechanics. Hence the telling, cramming, the endless 
explaining, the note learning, which enfeeble and deaden 
the native powers of the child; and hence, as the final 
consequence, the melancholy results of instruction in 
our primary schools, and the scarcely less melancholy 
results in schools of higher aims and pretensions, all of 
which are the legitimate fruit of the one fundamental 
error which I have over and over again pointed out. 

In accordance with these views, it has been insisted 
on throughout the entire Course of Lectures, that teach- 
ing, in the true sense of the term, has nothing in 
common with the system of telling, cramming, and 
drilling, which very generally ursurps its name. The 
teacher, properly so called, is a man who, besides know- 
ing the subject he has to teach, knows moreover the 
nature of the mind which he has to direct in its acquisi- 
tion of knowledge, and the best methods by which this 
may be accomplished. He must know the subject of 
instruction thoroughly, because, although it is not he 
but the child who is to learn, his knowledge will enable 
him to suggest the points to which the learner's atten- 
tion is to be directed; and besides, as his proper func- 
tion is to act as a guide, it is important that he should 
have previously taken the journey himself . Bat we dis- 
countenance the notion usually entertained that the 
teacher is to know because he has to communicate his knowl- 
edge to the learuer; and maintain, on the contrary, that 
his proper function as a teacher does not consist in the 
communication of his own knowledge to the learner, but 
rather in such action as ends in the learner's acquisition 
of knowledge for himself. To deny this principle is to 



38 THE SCIEXCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

give a direct sanction to telling and cramming, which 
are forbidden by the laws of education. To tell the 
child what he can learn for himself, is to neutralize his 
efforts; consequently to enfeeble his powers, to quench 
his interest in the subject, probably to create a distaste 
for it, to prevent him from learning how to learn — to 
defeat, in short, all the ends of true education. On the 
other hand, to get him to gain knowledge for himself 
stimulates his efforts, strengthens his powers, quickens 
his interest in the subject and makes him take pleasure 
in learning it, teaches him how to learn other subjects, 
leads to the formation of habits of thinking; and, in 
short, promotes all the ends of true education. The ob- 
vious objection to this view of the case is, that as there 
are many things which the child cannot learn by him- 
self, we must of course tell him them. My answer is, 
that the things which he cannot leain of himself are 
things unsuited to the actual state of his mind. His mind 
is not yet prepared for them; and by forcing them upon 
him prematurely, you are injuriously anticipating the 
natural course of things. You are cramming him with 
that which, although it may be knowledge to you, can- 
not possibly be knowledge to him. Knowing, in rela- 
tion to the training of the mind, is the result of learning; 
and learning is the process by which the child teaches 
himself; and he teaches himself — he can only teach him- 
self — by personal experience. Take, for instance, a por- 
tion of matter which, for some cause or other, interests 
hin). He exercises his senses upon it, looks at it, hand- 
les it, etc., throws it on the ground, flings it up into the 
air; and while doing all this, compares it with other 
things, gains notions of its color, form, hardness, weight, 



DIRECTION TOWARD SELF -ACTIVITY. 39 

etc. The result is, that without any direct teaching 
from you, without any telling, he knows it through his 
personal experience — he knows it, as we say, of his own 
knowledge; and has not only learned by himself some- 
thing that he did not know before, but has been learn- 
ing how to learn. But supposing that you are not satis- 
fied with his proceeding thus naturally and surely in the 
career of self-acqnisition, and you tell him something 
which he could not possibly learn by this method of his 
own. Let it be, for instance, the distance of the sun 
from the earth, the superficial area of Sweden, etc. 
When you liave told him that the sun is 95 millions of 
miles from the earth, that the area of Sweden is so many 
square miles, you have evidently transcended his per- 
sonal experience. What you have told him, instead of 
being knowledge gained, as in the other case, at first 
hand, is information obtained probably at tenth or even 
fifteenth hand, even by yourself, and is therefore in no 
true sense of the word " knowledge " even to you, much 
less is it knowledge to him; and in telling it to him pre- 
maturely, you are cramming and not teaching him. Dr. 
John Brown (" Horse Subsecivse," Second series, p. 473) 
well says, — "The great thing with knowledge and the 
young is to secure that it shall be their own; that it be 
not merely external to their inner and real self, but shall 
go in siiccum et sanguinem; and therefore it is that the self- 
teaching that a baby and a child give themselves re- 
mains with them forever. It is of their essence, whereas 
what is given them ah extra, especially if it be received 
mechanically without relish, and without any energiz- 
ing of the entire nature, remains pitifully useless and 
wersh (insipid.) Try, therefore, always to get the resi- 



40 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

dent teacher inside the shin, and who is for ever giving his 
lessons, to help you, and be on your side." Yon easily 
see from these remarks of Dr. Brown's that he means 
what I mean; — that matters of information obtained by 
other people's research, and which is true knowledge to 
those who have lawfully gained it, is not knowledge to 
a child, wdio has had no share in the acquisition, and 
your dogmatic imposilion of it upon his mind, or rather 
memory only, is of the essence of cramming. Such in- 
formation is merely patchwork laid over the substance 
of the cloth as compared with the texture of the cloth 
itself. It is on, but not o/, the fabric. This expansive 
and comprehensive principle — Avhich regards all learn- 
ing by mere rote, even of such matters as the multiplica- 
tion table or Latin declensions— before the child's mind 
has had some preliminary dealing with the facts of Num- 
ber or of Latin — as essentially cramming, and therefore 
anti-educational in its nature-will be of course, received 
or rejected by teachers, just in proportion as they receive 
or reject the conception of an art of teaching founded 
on psychological principles. 

And this brings me to the next point for special con- 
sideration. I said that the teacher who is to direct intel- 
lectual operations should understai^d what they are. He 
should, especially as a teacher of little children, examine 
well the method, already referred to, by which they gain 
all their elementary knowledge by themselves, by the 
exercise of their own powers. He should study children 
in the concrete, — take note of the causes which operate 
on the will, which enlist the feelings, which call forth the 
intellect, — in order tiiat he may use his knowledge with 
the best effect when he takes the place of the great 



TEACHING BASED ON PSYCHOLOGY. 41 

natural educator. To change slightly Locke's words, he 
is to "consider the operation of tlie discerning faculties 
of a child as they are employed, about the objects which 
they have to do with; " and this because it is his proper 
function as a teacher to guide this operation. And if he 
wishes to be an accomplished teacher — a master of his 
art — be should further study the principles of Psychol- 
ogy, the true groundwork of his action, in the writings 
of Locke, Dugald Stewart, Bain, Mill, and others, who 
show us what these principles are. This study will give 
a scientific compactness and co-ordination to the facts 
which he has learned by his own method of investiga- 
tion. 

But it may be said, Do you demand all this prepara- 
tion for the equipment of a mere elementary teacher ? 
My reply is, I require it because he is an elementary 
teacher. Whatever may be done in the case of those 
children who are somewhat advanced in their career, 
and who have, to some extent at least, learnt how to 
learn, it is most of all important that in the beginning of 
instruction: and with 9 view to gain the most fruitful 
results from that instruction, the earliest teacher should 
be an adept in the Science and Art of Education. We 
should do as the Jesuits did in their famous schools, who, 
when they found a teacher showing real skill and knowl- 
edge in teaching the higher classes, promoted him to the 
charge of the lowest. There was a wise insight into 
human nature in this. Whether the child shall love or 
hate knowledge, — whether his fundamental notions of 
things shall be clear or cloudy, — whether he shall 
advance in his course as an intelligent being, or as a 
mere machine, — whether he shall, at last, leave school 



42 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

stuffed with crude, undigested gobbets of knowledge, or 
possessed of knowledge assimilated by his own diges- 
tion, and therefore a source of mental health and 
strength, — whether he shall be lean, atrophied, weak, 
destitute of the power of self-government and self-direc- 
tion, or strong, robust, and independent in thought and 
action, — depends almost altogether on the manner in 
which his earliest instruction is conducted, and this 
again on the teacher's aquaintance with the Science and 
Art of Education. 

But besides knowing the subject of instruction, and 
knowing the Art of Education founded on the Science, 
the accomplished teacher should also know the methods 
of teaching devised or adopted by the most eminent 
practitioners of his art. A teacher, even when equipped 
in the manner I have suggested, cannot safely dispense 
with the experience of others. In applying principles to 
practice there is always a better or a worse manner of 
doing so, and one may learn much from knowing how 
others have overcome the difficulties at which we 
stumble. 

Many a teacher, when doubtful of the princij^les which 
constitute his usual rule of action, will gain confidence 
and strength by seeing their operation in the practice of 
others, or may be reminded of them when he has for the 
moment lost sight of them. Is it nothing to a teacher 
that PJato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Quintilian, in ancient 
times; Ascham, Rousseau, Comenius, Sturm, Pestalozzi, 
Ratich, Jacotot, Frobel, Richter, Herbart, Beneke, Dies- 
terweg, Arnold, Spencer, and a host of others in modern 
times, have written and w^orked to show him what edu- 
cation is both io theory and practice ? Does he evince 



THE HISTORY OF EDUCATIONS'. 43 

anything ])at his own ignorance by pretending to despise 
or ignore their labors ? What would be said of a medi- 
cal practioner who knows nothing of the works or even 
the names of Celsus, Galen, Harvey, John Hunter, 
Sydenham, Bell, etc., and who sets up his empirical 
practice against the vast weight of their authority and 
experience? I need not insist on this argument; it is 
too obvious. Much time, therefore, has been devoted, 
during the year, to the History of Education in various 
countries and ages, and to the special work of some of 
the great educational reformers. In particular, the 
methods of Ascham, Ratich, Comenius, Pestalozzi, 
Jacotot, and Frobel have been minutely described and 
criticised. 

And now it is only right to endeavor, in conclusion, to 
answer the question which may be fairly asked, '^ After 
all, what have you really accomplished by this elaborate 
exposition of principles and methods ? You have had 
no training schools for the j^ractice of your students; it 
has all ended in talk." In reply to this inqiry or objec- 
tion, I have a few Avords to say. The students whom I 
have been instructing are for the most jDart teachers 
already, who are practising their art every day. My 
object has been so forcibly to stamp upon their minds a 
few great principles, so strongly to impress them with 
convictions of the truth of these principles, that it should 
be impossible, in the nature of things, for them as my 
disciples, to act in contradiction or violation of them. 
Whenever, in their practice, they are temj^ted to resort 
to drill and cram, I know, without being there to see, 
that the principles which have become a part of their 
being, because founded on the truths of nature recog- 



44 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

nized by themselves, rise up before tbem and forbid the 
intended delinquency. Tn this way, without the appa- 
ratus of a training school, the work of a training school is 
done. 

But, in order to show that I am not talking at ran- 
dom, I will quote a few passages from exercises written 
by the students themselves, relative to their own expe- 
rience: — 

" Before attending these Lectures, my aim was that my pupils 
should gain a certain amount of knowledge. I now see how far 
more important is the exercise of those powers by which knowl- 
edge is gained. I am therefore trying to make them think for 
themselves. This, and the principle of repetition, which has been 
so much insisted upon, prevents us from getting over as much 
ground as formerly, but I feel that the work done is much more 
satisfactory than it used to be. I now try to adapt my plan to 
the pupil, not the pupil to my plan. I used to prepare a lesson 
(say in history) with great care; all the information which I thus 
laboriously gained, I imparted to my pupils in a few miautes. I 
now see that, though I was benefitted by the process, my pupils 
could have gained but little good from it. The fact of having a 
definite end in view gives me confidence in my practice. The 
effect of these Lectures, as a whole, has been to give me a new 
interest in my w^ork." 

"I knew before that the ordinary 'learn by rote ' method was 
not real education; but being unacquainted with the Science 
upon which the true art of instruction is founded, all my ideas 
on the subject were vague and changeable, and 1 often missed 
the very definite results of the ' hurdy gurdy ' system without 
altogether securing any better ones. 

"I have learned that the only education worthy of the name is 
based upon principles derived from the study of child nature, 
and from the observation of nature's methods of developing and 
training the inherent powers of children from the very moment 
of their birth. I have had my eyes opened to observe these pro- 
cesses, and now see much more in the actions of little children 



PRACTICAL RESULTS OF INSTRUCTIOIST. 45 

than I formerly did. More than this, I have learned to apply 
the principles of nature to the processes of formal education, and 
by them to test their value and rightness, so that I need no 
longer be in doubt and darkness, but have sure grounds to pro. 
ceed upon under any variation of circumstances. 

" Lastly, I have learned to reverence and admire the great and 
good, who in different ages and various countries have devoted 
their minds to the principles or the practice of education, whose 
thoughts, whose successes, whose very failures are full of instruc- 
tion for educators of the present day, especially for those who, 
having been guided to the sure basis upon which true education 
rests, are in a position to judge of the value of their different 
theories and plans, and to choose the good and refuse the evil." 

" What you have done for me, I endeavor to do for my pupils. 
I make them correct their own errors; indeed, do their own work 
as much as possible. Since you have been teaching me, my 
pupils have progressed in mental development as they have never 
done in all the years I have been teaching. Though from want 
of power and early training I have not done you the justice which 
many of your pupils have, still you have set your seal upon me, 
and made me aim at being, what I was not formerly, a scientific 
teacher." 

"....And now to turn to the modifications introduced into 
my practice by these Lectures. I was delighted with them, and 
was more astonished as each week passed at what I heard. New 
light dawned upon me, and I determined to profit by it. I soon 
saw some of the prodigious imperfections in my teaching, and set 
about remedying them. My ' pupils should be self-teachers,' 
then I must treat them as such. I left off telling them so much, 
and made them work more. I discontinued correcting their exer- 
cises, and made them correct them themselves. I made them look 
over their dictation before they wrote it, and, when it was fin- 
ished, referred them to the text-book to see whether they had 
written it correctly. . . .Time would fail me to give in detail all 
the alterations introduced into my practice." 

"In conclusion, considering what my theory and practice 
were when I entered your class, I am convinced that the benefits 



46 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

I have derived as regards both are as follows: — (1) I have learned 
to observe, (2) to admire, (3) to imitate, aud (4) to follow, Nature. 
My theories have become based on the firm foundation of princi- 
ples founded on facts; my practice (falling far short of the per- 
fection that I aim at attaining) is nevertheless in the spirit of it. 
And although in all probability I shall never equal any of these 
great teachers whose lives and labors you have described, yet I 
know that I shall daily improve in my practice if I hold fast to 
the principles that you have laid down. I consider you have 
shown me the value of a treasure that I unconsciously possessed — 
I mean the power of observing Nature, and therefore I feel 
towards you the same sort of gratitude that the man feels towardl 
the physician who has restored his sight." 

These expressions will show that my labors, however 
imperfect, have not ended in mere talk. 

And now it is time to set you free from the long 
demand I have made on your patience. I have studi- 
ously avoided in this Lecture tickling your ears with 
rhetorical flourishes. My great master, Jacotot, has 
taught me that " rhetoric and reason have nothing in 
common." 1 have therefore appealed to your reason. 
I certainly might have condensed my matter more; but 
long experience in the art of intellectual feeding has 
convinced me that concentrated food is not easy of 
digestion. But for this fault — if it be one — and for any 
other, whether of commission or omission, I throw 
myself on your indulgent consideration. 



THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION-ANALYSIS. 

A. The Science of Education. 

I. Objections encountered. 

1. That there is no Science of Education 18 

{a) The experience of Germany 19 

2. That Teachers have Nothing to Learn .31 

{a) That he who linows a subject can teach it 33 

a But the problem is to get the pupil to learn S3 

fi The teacher's scholarship may be an obstacle 33 

II. Means of establishing a Science of Education. 34 

1. Who is to guarantee its soundness ? 25 

3. Not to be evolved from present practice 35 

8, Nature's system to be followed. 26 

III. Principles discovered by investigation 27 

1. Mind and body interdependent.. 27 

2. Faculty grows by exercise 38 

3. Exercise ends in habits and perception 39 

4. Exercise ends in acquisition and invigoration, 30 

5. Definition of Natural Education 31 

6. Definition of Education 31 

B. The Art of Education. 

I. Science and Art distinguished ..33 

1. Science deals with essence; art with action 33 

2. Art is nature with man added 32 

3. Art is the application of the science 32 

II. Applications of Art based on Science 33 

1. Teaching involves interest and sympathy... -.-33 

2. Teaching exercises the pupil's powers .34 

3. Teaching begins with known facts. 36 

III. The teacher must understand the pupil's mind 36 

1. Sympathy may do the work of knowledge 37 

2 But teaching is a psychological art , . 37 



48 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF EDUCATION. 

3. Teaching vs. telling, cramming, drilling 38 

IV. The teacher to direct the pupil to self-activity 38 

1. The pupil unfitted for what he cannot learn by himself ..39 
(a) Knowledge should be the pupil's own 39 

2. Hence the teacher must know the pupil's mind. .41 

(a) Especially important in primary work 41 

a Promotion downward 43 

C. The History of Education .43 

I. Confidence and strength from practice of others 43 

D. The Practical Results of the Training of Teachers. 

I. Extracts from letters - - 44 



THE THEORY 
OR SCIENCE OF EDUCATION.* 

It is proposed in this course of three Lectures, to treat 
of, 1st, The Theory or Science of Education; 2d, The 
Practice or Art of Education; 3d, Educational Methods, 
or special applications of the Science and Art. 

The Science of Education is sometimes called Peda- 
gogy or Paideutics, and the Art of Education, Didactics. 
There seems, however, no need for these technical terms. 
The expressions Science and Art of Education are ex- 
plicit, and sufficiently answer the purpose. 

The Theory or Science, as distinguished from the Prac- 
tice or Art, embraces an inquiry into the principles on 
which the Practice or Art depends, and which give 
reasons for the efficiency or inefficiency of that practice. 
I do not profess in this Lecture to construct the Science 
of Education — that still waits for its development. As, 
however, its ultimate evolution depends very much on 
a general recognition of its value and importance, I pro- 
pose to indicate a few of its principles, as well as some of 
the sources from which they may be derived ; and further, 
to show the need for their application to the present 
condition of the art. 

In the ]jrogress of knowledge, practice ever precedes 
theory. We do, before we enquire why we do. Thus 
the practice of language goes before the investigation 

♦Delivered at the House of the Society of Arts, on 12th July, 1871 ; 
Professor Huxley, LL.D., in the Chair. 

C 49 



60 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

into its laws, and the Art before the Science of Music. 
It is the same with Education. The practice has long 
existed; but the theory has, as yet, been only partially 
recognized. As, however, theory re-acts on practice, 
and improves it, we may hope to see the same results in 
Education, when it shall be scientifically investigated. 

As the terms Education and Instruction will fre- 
quently occur in these Lectures, it may be convenient 
at the outset to enquire into their exact meaning. 
/ The verb educare, from which we get our word educate, 
differs from its primitive (?<?wcer^ in this respect, that while 
the latter means to draw forth by a single act, the form- 
er, as a sort of frequentative verb, signifies to draw forth 
frequently, repeatedly, persistently, and therefore strong- 
ly and permanently; and in a secondary sense to draw 
forth faculties, to train or educate them. . An educator 
is therefore a trainer, whose functions it is to draw forth 
persistently, habitually and permanently, the powers of 
a child, and education is the process which he employs 
for this purpose. 

Then as to Instruction. The Latin verb instruere, from 
which we derive instruct, means to place materials to- 
gether, not at random, but for a purpose — to pile or 
heap them one upon another in an orderly manner, as 
parts of a preconceived whole. Instruction, then, is the 
orderly placing of knowledge in the mind, with a defi- 
nite object. The mere aggregation, by a teacher, in the 
minds of his pupils, of incoherent ideas, gained by desulto- 
ry and unconnected mental acts, is nomoYQ instruction t\\2A\ 
heaping bricks and stones together is building a house. 
The true instructor is never contented with the mere 
collection of matex-ials, however valuable in themselves, 



EDUCATION VS. INSTRtJCTION. 5l 

but continually seeks to make them subservient to the 
end he has in view. He is an educational Amphion, under 
whose influence the bricks and stones move together to 
the place where they are wanted, and grow into the form 
of a harmonious fabric. 

Instruction thus viewed, is not, as some conceive of it, 
the antithesis of Education, nor generically distinct from 
it. Every educator is an instructor; for education 
attains its ends through instruction; but, as will be 
shown, the instructor who is not also consciously an ed- 
ucator, fails to accomplish the highest aims of his 
science. The instruction which ends in itself is not 
complete education. 

But we will now attempt to give a definition of Edu- 
cation. 

Education, in its widest sense, is a general expression 
that comprehends all the influences which operate on 
the human being, stimulating his faculties to action, 
forming his habits, moulding his character, and making 
him what he is.* Though so powerfully affected by 
these influences, he may be entirely unconscious of them. 
They are to him as "the wind which bloweth where it 
listeth; but he knows not whence it cometh nor whither 
it goeth." They are not, however, less real on this ac- 
count. The circumstances by which he is surrounded — 
the climate, the-natural scenery, the air he breathes, the 
food he eats, the moral tone of the family life, that of 
the community — all have a share in converting the raw 
material of human nature, either into healthy, intelli- 
gent, moral, and religious man; or, on the contrary, in 

*" Whatever," says Mr. J. S. Mill, " helps to shape the human being, 
to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is 
not, is part of his education."— Z/ia«flruraZ Address at St. Andrews. 



62 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

converting it iuto an embodiment of weakness, stupid- 
ity, wickedness, and misery. Thus external influences 
automatically acting upon a neutral nature, produce, 
each after its kind, the most opposite results. In this 
sense the poor little gamin of our streets, who defiles the 
air with his blasphemies, whose thoughts are of the 
dirt, dirty, who picks our pockets with a clear con- 
science, has been duly educated by the impure atmosphere, 
the squalid misery, the sad examples of act and speech 
presented to him in his daily life — to be the outcast 
that he is. Such instances show the wondrous power 
of the education of circumstance. 

It is a noticeable characteristic of this kind of educa- 
tion, that its pupils rarely evince of their own accord 
any desire for improvement, and are in this respect 
scarcely distinguishable from barbarians. The savages 
of our race remain savages, not because they have not 
the same original faculties as ourselves — faculties gen- 
erally capable of improvement — but because they have 
no desire for improvement. Nature does indeed furnish 
her children with elementary lessons. She teaches them 
the use of the senses, language, and the qualities of 
matter, but she leaves them to procure advanced knowl- 
edge for themselves, while she implants in their minds 
neither motive nor desire for its acquisition. The dif- 
ferentia of the savage is, that he has rarely any wish 
for self-elevation. It is sad to think how many savages 
of this kind we have still amongst ourselves! 

But education is conscious as well as unconscious. 
Some cause or other suggests the desire for improve- 
ment. The teacher aj)pears in the field, and civilization 
begins its career. The civilization which we contrast 



EDUCATION DEFINED. 53 

with barbarism is simply the result of that action of 
mind on mind which carries forward the teaching of 
Nature — in other words, of what we call education. 
Where there is no specific conscious education, there is 
no civilization. Where education is fully appreciated, 
the result is high civilization; and generally, as educa- 
tion advances, civilization advances in proportion, and 
thus affords a measure of its influence. It follows, then, 
that all the civilization that exists is ultimately due to 
the educator, including, of course, the educator in 
religion. 

Education, then, as we may now more specifically 
define it, is the training carried on consciously and con- 
tinuously by the educator, and its object is to convert 
desultory and accidental force into organizeJ action; 
and its ultimate aim is to make the child operated on by 
it capable of becoming a healthy, intelligent, moral, and 
religious man; or it may be described as the systema- 
tization of all the influences which the Science of Edu- 
cation re(;ognizes as capable of being employed by one 
human being to develop, direct, and maintain vital force 
in another, with a view to the formation of habits. 

This conception of the end of education defines the 
function of the educator. He has to direct forces 
already existing to a definite object, and in proportion 
as his direction is wise and judicious will the object be 
secured. 

He has in the child before him an embodiment of 
animal, intellectual, and moral forces, the action of 
which is irregular and fortuitous. These forces he has 
to develop further, direct, and organize. The child has 
an animal nature, affected by external influences, and en- 



54 THEORY OP EDUCATION. 

(lowed with vital energies, which may be used or abused 
to his weal or woe. He has also an intellectual nature, 
capable of indefinite development, which may be 
employed in the acquisition of knowledge, and gain 
strength by the very act of acquisition; but which may, 
on the other hand, through neglect, waste its powers, or 
by perversion abuse them. He has, moreover, a moral 
nature capable by cultivation of becoming a means of 
usefulness and happiness to himself and others, or of 
becoming by its corruption the fruitful source of misery 
to himself and the community. 

It is the business of the educator, by his action and 
influence on these forces, to secure their beneficial and 
avert their injurious manifestation — to convert this un- 
disciplined energy into a fund of organized self-acting 
power. 

In order to do this efficiently, he ought to understand 
the nature of the phenomena that he has to deal with; 
and his own training as a teacher ought especially to 
have this object in view. Without this knowledge, 
much that he does may be really injurious, and much 
more of no value. 

To speak technically, then, a knowledge of what is 
going on in his pupils' bodies, minds, and hearts, their 
subjective process, will regulate the means which he 
adopts to direct the action of those bodies, minds, and 
hearts, which is his objective process — the one being a 
counterpart of the other — and the consideration of what 
this knowledge consists of, and how it may be best 
applied, constitutes the Theory or Science of Education. 

I am well aware that the mention of the words 
*'• Theory of Education," and the assumption that the 



THE SCIENCE JUSTIFIED. 55 

educator ought to be educated in it, is apt to excite 
some degree of opposition in the minds of those who 
claim especially the title of " practical teachers," and 
who therefore characterize this theory as "a quackery." 
Now a quack, the dictionaiy ttdls us, is " one who prac- 
tises an art without any knowledge of its principles." 
There seems, then, to be a curious infelicity of language 
in calling a subject which embraces principles, which 
especially insists on principles, a quackery. If educa- 
tion thus viewed is a quackery, then the same must be 
said of medicine, law, and theology; and it would follow 
that the greatest proHcient in ihe principles of these 
sciences must be the greatest quack — a remarkable 
redudio ad absurdum. This position, then, will perhaps 
hardly be maintained. 

But there is a second line of defence. The practical 
teachers say — and, doubtless, say sincerely — " We don't 
want any Theory of Education; our aim is practical, we 
want nothing but the practical." We agree with them 
as to the value, the indispensable value, of the practical, 
but not as to the assumed antagonism between theory 
and practice. So far from being in any strict sense 
opposed, they are identical. Theory is the general, 
practice the particular, expression of the same facts. 
The words of the theory interpret the practice; the 
propositions of the science interpret the silent language 
of the art. The one represents truth m posse, the other, 
in esse ; the one, as Dr. Whewell well remarks, involves, 
the other evolves, principles. So in Education, theory 
and practice go hand-in-hand; and the practical man 
who denounces theory is a theorist in fact.* He does 

* '* Theory and practice always act upou each other; one cau see from 
their works what men's opinions are ; and from their opinions predict 
what they will do."—Oo6the, 



56 THEOEY OF EDUCATION. 

not of course drive blindly on, without caring whither 
he is going; the conception, then, which he forms of his 
end, is liis theory. Nor does he act without considering 
the means for securing his object. This consideration 
of the means as suitable or unsuitable for his purpose, is 
again his theory. In fact, the reasons which lie would 
give for his actual practice, to account for it or defend 
it, constitute, whether he admits it or not, his theory of 
action. All that we ask, is that this conception of tlie- 
ory in relation to education should be extended and. 
reduced to principles. 

Mr. Grove, the eminent Q.C., in an address given at 
St. Mary's Hospital, forcibly expresses the same opin- 
ion: — "If there be one species of cant," he says, "more 
detestable than another, it is that which eulogizes what 
is called the practical man as contradistinguished from 
the scientific. If by practical man is meant one who, 
having a mind well stored with scientific and general 
information, has his knowledge chastened and his theo- 
retic temerity subdued, by varied experience, nothing 
can be better; but if, as is commonly meant by the 
phrase, a practical man means one whose knowledge is 
only derived from habit or traditional system, such a 
man has no resource to meet unusual circumstances; 
such a man has no plasticity; he kills a man according 
to rule, and consoles himself, like Moliere's doctor, by 
the reflection that a dead man is only a dead man, but 
that a deviation from received practice is an injury to 
the whole profession." 

Practical teachers may, however, admit that they 
have a theory, an empirical theory, of their own which 
governs their practice, and yet deny that the general- 



PEACflCAL AND POSSIBLE. B^ 

ization of this theory into principles would be of any 
value to themselves or to the cause of education. They 
may go further still, and deny both that there is or can 
be any Science of Education. Some do, indeed, deny 
both these positions. It has already been admitted that 
the Science of Education is as yet in a rudimentary con- 
dition. There is at present no such code of indisputa- 
ble laws to test and govern educational action as there 
is in many other sciences. Its principles lie disjointed 
and unorganized in the sciences of Physiology, Psychol- 
ogy, Ethics, and Logic, and will only be gathered to- 
gether and codified when we rise to a high conception 
of its value and importance. Even now, however, they 
are acknowledged in the discussion of such questions as, 
the best method of training the natural faculties of 
children — the order of their development — the subjects 
proper for the curriculum of instruction — book teaching 
versm oral — the differentia of female education — school 
dii^cipline — moral training, and a multitude of others 
which will one day be decided by a reference, not to 
traditional usage, but to the principles of the Science of 
Education. The fact, then, that this science is not yet 
objectively constructed is no argument against our 
attempting to construct it, and we maintain that the 
pertinacious adherence to the notion of the all-sufiiciency 
of routine, forms the greatest difficulty in the way of 
securing the object. It is, however, mainly for the sake 
of the teachers of the next generation that the import- 
ance of a true conception of the value of principles in 
education is insisted on. 

It follows, then, that practical teachers who desire to 
see practice improved — and surely there is need of im- 



58 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

provement — ought to admit that there is the same obli- 
gation resting on the educator to study the principles 
of his art as there is on the physician to study anatomy 
and therapeutics, and on the civil engineer to study 
mechanics. The art in each of these cases has a scien- 
tific basis, and the practitioner who desires to be suc- 
cessful in it — to be the master and not the slave of 
routine — must studiously investigate its fundamental 
principles. 

But there is another argument against routine teach- 
ing which ought not be omitted. It is founded on the 
effect which such teaching produces on the pupil. Those 
teachers who are themselves the slaves of routine make 
their pupils slaves also. Without intellectual freedom 
themselves, they cannot emancipate their pupils. The 
machine generates machines. They make their pupils 
mechanically apt and dexterous in processes, and in this 
way train them to practice; but, not appreciating princi- 
ples themselves, they cannot train them to principles. 
Yet this latter training, which essentially involves rea- 
soning and thought, ought to be the continual and 
persistent aim of the educator. He has very imperfectly 
accomplished the end of his being if he dismisses his 
pupils as merely mechanical artisans, knowing the how^ 
but ignorant of the t^Ay ; expert in processes but unin- 
formed in principles; instructed, but not truly educated. 
It is the possession of principles which gives mental life, 
courage and power; the courage which is not daunted 
where routine fails, the power which not only firmly di- 
rects the established machinery,but corrects its apparent 
eccentricities, can repair it when it is deranged, and adjust 
its forces to new emergencies. Take the case of a rou- 



ROUTINE TEACHING. 59 

tine pupil to whom you propose an arithmetical problem. 
His first enquiry is, not what are the conditions of the 
question, and the principles involved in its solution, but 
what rule he is to work it by.* This is the question of 
a slave, who can do nothing without orders from his 
master. Well, you give him the rule. The rule is, in 
fact, a resume of principles which some scientific man has 
deduced from concrete facts and which represents and 
embodies the net result of various processes of his mind 
upon them. But what is it to our routine pupil? To 
him it is merely an order given by a slave driver, and he 
hears in it the words, — Do this; don't do that; don't ask 
why; do exactly as I bid you. He reads his rule, his 
order, does what he is bid, grinds away at his work, and 
arrives at the end of it a slave as much as ever, and he 
is a slave because his master has made him one. 

Educators, indeed, like other men, come under two 
large categories, which may be described in the preg- 
nant words of the accomplished author of the '* Auto- 
crat at the Breakfast Table." " All economical and 
practical wisdom," he says, " is an extension or variation 
of the following arithmetical formula 2 + 2=4. Every 
philosophical proposition, has the more general character 
of the expression a+ J =^. We are merely operatives, 
empirics, and egotists, until we begin to think in let- 
ters instead of figures." 

Now the mere routine teacher belongs to the former, 
and the true educator to the latter class, and each will 
stamp his own image on his pupils. 

• MM. Demogeot and Montucci, in their lleport to tlie French Gov- 
ernment on English Secondary Instruction (Paris 1867) severely comment 
on the mechanical spirit in which mathematics are generally taught in our 
schools through our taking little account of the reason, and making pro- 
cesses rather than principles the end of instruction (p. 120). 



60 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

All that has been said resolves itself, then, into 
the proposition that a Tnan engaged in a profession, as 
distinguished from a mere handicraft, onght not only to 
know what he is doing, but why; the one constituting his 
practice, the other his theory. He cannot give a reason 
for the faith that is in him, unless he examines the grounds 
of that faith, — unless he examines: them per se, and traces 
their connection with each other and with the whole 
body of truth. The possession of this higher kind of 
knowledge, the knowledge of principles and laws, is, 
strictly speaking, his only warrant for the pretension 
that he is sl professional man, and not a mere mechanic. 
Society has not, indeed, hitherto demanded this profes- 
sional equipment for the educator, nor has the educator 
himself generally recognized the obligation, aptly stated 
by Dr. Arnold, that, "in whatever it is our duty to act, 
those matters also it is our duty to study," and hence 
the present condition of education in England. Educa- 
tion can never take its proper rank among the learned 
professions, that proper rank being really the highest of 
them all, until teachers see that there really are princi- 
ples of Education, and thut it is their duty to study 
then). 

But there is another mode of studying principles be- 
sides investigating them per se. They may be studied 
in the practice of those who have mastered them. 

It is clear that a man may have carefully investigated 
the principles of an art, and yet fail in the application 
of them. This generally arises from not having fully 
comprehended them. He has omitted to notice or ap- 
preciate something which, if he knew it, would answer 
his purpose 5 or from want of early training finds it diffi- 



EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS. 61 

cult to deduce facts from principles, practice from theory, 
lu such a case there is an available resource. Others 
have seen what he has failed to see, have firmly grasped 
what he has not comprehended, have made the necessary 
deductions, and embodied them in their own practice. 
Let the learner, then, in the Science of Education, study 
that practice, and trace it in the correspondence between 
the principles -which he but partially appreciates, and 
their practical application in the methods of those who 
have thought them out. In other words, let him study 
the great masters of his art, and learn from them the 
philosophy which teaches by examples. This study, so 
far from being inconsistent with the Theory of Educa- 
tion, is, indeed, a necessary part of it. We may all 
learn something from the successful experience of others. 
De Quincy (as quoted by Mr. Quick in his valuable '* Es- 
says on Educational Reformers*") has pointed out that 
a man who takes up any pursuit, without knowing what 
advances others have made in it, works at a great disad- 
vantage. He d'^es not apply his strength in the right 
direction, he troubles himself about small matters and 
neglects great, he falls into errors that have long since 
been exploded. To this Mr. Quick pertinently adds, — 
"1 venture to think, therefore, that practical men, in ed- 
ucation, as in most other things, may derive benefit from 
the knowledge of what has been already said and done 
by the leading men engaged in it both past and present." 
Notwitlistanding the obvious common sense of this ob- 
servation, it is undeniably true that the great majority 
of teachers are profoundly ignorant of the sayings and 
doings of the authorities in education. Their own em- 
*Published by C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y., price $1.50. 



62 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

pirical methods, their own self-devised principles of 
instruction, generally form their entire equipment for 
their profession. I have myself questioned on this sub- 
ject scores of middle-class teachers, and have not met 
with so many as half-a-dozen who knew anything more 
than the names, and often not these, of Quintilian, Asch- 
am, Comenius, Locke, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, Arnold, and 
Herbert Spencer. What should we say of a physician 
who was entirely unacquainted with the researches of 
Hippocrates, Galen, Harvey, Sydenham, the Hunters, 
and Bright ? 

In the foregoing remarks I have endeavored to show 
that there is, and must be, a Theory of Education under- 
lying the practice, however manifested, and to vindicate 
the conception of it from the contempt sometimes 
thoughtlessly thrown upon it by practical teachers. 

But it is important now to attempt to ascertain what 
resources, in the shape of principles, hints, and sugges- 
tions, it furnishes to the educator in his three-fold capac- 
ity of director of Physical, Mental, and Moral education. 

The conception we have formed of the educator in re- 
lation to his work requires him to be possessed of a 
knowledge of the being whom he has to control and 
guide. " Whatever questions," says Dr. Youmans, of 
New York, " of the proper subjects to be taught, their 
relative claims, or the true methods of teaching them, 
may arise, there is a prior and fundamental enquiry into 
the nature, capabilities, and requirements of the being 
to be taught. A knowledge of the being to be trained, 
as it is the basis of all intelligent culture, must be the 
first necessity of the teacher" (p. 404).* 

* "Xli« Culture demanded b^ a Modem Lile," 



1*HYSICAL EDUCATION 63 

Physical Education. 
Viewed merely as an animal, this being is a depository 
of vital forces, which may be excited or depressed, well- 
directed or misdirected. These forces are resident 
in a complicated structure of limbs, senses, breathing, 
digesting, and blood-circulating apparatus, etc.; and 
their healthy manifestation depends much (of course 
not altogether) upon circumstances under the control of 
the educator. If he understands the phenomeria, he will 
modify the circumstances for the benefit of the child; if 
he does not understand them, the child will suffer from 
his ignorance. The daily experience of the school -room 
sufficiently illustrates this point. Place a large num- 
ber of children in a small room with the windows shut 
down, and detain them at their lessons for two or three 
hours together. Then take note of what you see. The 
impure air, breathed and rebreathed over and over again, 
has lost its vitality — has become poisonous. It re-acts 
on the blood, and this again on the brain. The teacher 
as well as the children all suffer from the same cause. 
He languidly delivers a lesson to pupils who more lan- 
guidly receive it. They are no longer able to concen- 
trate their attention. They answer his half-understood 
questions carelessly and incorrectly. Not appreciating 
the true state of the case, he treats them as wilfully in- 
different, and punishes the offenders, as they feel, unjuvSt- 
ly. They retain this impression; the cordial relation 
subsisting before is rudely disturbed, and his moral 
influence over them is impaired. We have here a nat- 
ural series of causes and consequences. The state of the 
air, a physical cause, acts first on the bodies, then on 
the minds, and lastly on the hearts of the pupils; the 



64 THEORY OF EDFCATlON. 

last being, perhaps, the most important consequence of 
the three. Now in this case both teacher and pupils 
suffer from neglect of those laws of health which a 
knowledge of Physiology would have supplied. It is 
unnecessary to dwell upon the obvious applications of 
such knowledge to diet, sleep, cleanliness, clothing, etc. 

Knowledge of this kind has been strangely overlooked 
in the educator's own education, though so much of his 
efficiency depends on his acting himself, and causing 
others to act, on the full recognition of its value. Edu- 
cation has too generally been regarded in its relations 
to the mind, and the co-operation of the body in the 
mind's action has been forgotten. Those who listened 
to the masterly lecture, delivered a few years ago at 
this College, by Dr. Youmans, on the " Scientific Study 
of Human Nature," will remember his eloquent vindica- 
tion of the claims of the body to that consideration 
which educators too frequently deny it, and the conse- 
quent importance to them of sound physiological knowl- 
edge. With singular force of reasoning he showed 
that the healthiness of the brain, as the organic seat of the 
mind, is the essentia! basis of the teacher's operations; 
that the efficiency of the brain depends in a great de- 
gree on the healthy condition of the stomach, lungs, 
heart and skin; and that this condition is very much af- 
fected by the teacher's application to the laws of health 
as founded on Physiology. His general remarks on 
education, and especially on physical education, are too 
valuable to be omitted: — 

*'The imminent question," he says (p. 406), "is, how 
may the child and youth be developed healthfully and 
vigorously, bodily, mentally, and morally? and science 



PHYSICAL EDUCATIOI^. 65 

alone can answer it by a statement of the laws upon 
vhich that development depends. Ignorance of these 
hws must inevitably involve mismanagement. That 
there is a large amount of mental perversion and ab- 
solute stupidity, as well as bodily disease, produced in 
school, by measures which operate to the prejudice of 
the growing brain, is not to be doubted; that dullness, 
indoeility, and viciousness, are frequently aggravated by 
teachers, incapable of discriminating between their men- 
tal and bodily causes, is also undeniable; while that 
teachers often miserably fail to improve their pupils, and 
then report the result of their own incompetency as failures 
of nature^ — all may have seen, although it is now proved 
that the lowest imbeciles are not sunk beneatii the pos- 
sibility of elevation." 

I give one short quotation from Dr. Andrew Combe, 
to the same effect. " I cannot," he says, regard any 
teacher, or parent, as fully and conscientiously qualified 
for his duties, unless he has made himself acquainted 
with the nature and general laws of the animal economy, 
and with the direct relation in which these stand to the 
principles of education." Dr. Brigham also advises 
those who undertake to cultivate and discipline the mind, 
to acquaint themselves with Human Anatomy and Phy- 
siology. 

All these authorities agree, then, that educators have 
a better chance of improving the physical condition of 
their pupils if they are themselves acquainted with the 
laws of health; and they insist, moreover, that the health 
of the body is not only desirable for its own sake, but 
because, from the interdependence of mind and body, the 
meriB sana depends so much on the corpus sanum. This 



66 THEOET OF EDUCATloS". 

truth is strikingly, though paradoxically, expressed b^^ 
Rousseau, when he says, " The weaker the body is, the 
more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it 
obeys;" and when he also says, "make your pupil 
robust and healthy, in order to make him reasonable snd 
wise." 

In short, hundreds of writers have written on this sub- 
ject for the benefit of educators, thousands of whom 
have never even heard of, much less read, their writings; 
or, if they have, pursue the even tenor of their way, do- 
ino: inst as thev did before, and isjnorautlv laue:hin2: at 
Hygiene and all the aid she offers them. 

Physical education also comprehends the training of 
special faculties and functions, with a view to improve 
their condition. The trainer of horses, dogs, singing 
birds, boxers, boat crews, and cricketers, all make a 
study, more or less profound, of the material they have 
to deal with — all except the educator, the trainer of 
trainers, who generally leaves things to take their chance, 
or assumes that the object will be sufficiently gained by 
the exercises of the playground and the gymnastic ap- 
paratus. It would be easy to show that this self-educa- 
tion, although most valuable, is insufficient, and ought 
to be supplemented by the appliances of Physiological 
Science. This science would suggest, in some cases, 
remedies for natural defects; in others, suitable train- 
ing for natural weakness; in others, still graver reasons 
for checking the injurious tendency, so common among 
children, to over exertion; and in all these cases would 
be directly ancillary to the professed object of the edu- 
cator as a trainer of intellectual and moral forces. 

The effect, too, of the condition of the mind on that 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATIOISr. 6V 

of the body — the converse reciprocal action — is an 
Important part of this subject; but there is no time 
to enter on it. 

Intellectual Education. 

But let us next consider the relation of the educator 
to the intellectual education of his pupils. However will- 
ing he may be to repudiate his responsibility for the 
trainingof their bodies, he cannot deny the responsibility 
for the training of their minds. But here Dr. Youman's 
words, already quoted, apply with especial force — "A 
knowledge of the being to be trained, as it is the basis 
of intelligent culture, must be the first necessity of the 
teacher," and few perhaps will venture to argue against 
those that follow: "Education," he says "is an art, like 
locomotion, mining, and bleaching, which may be pur- 
sued empirically, or rationally — as ablindhabit, or under 
intelligent guidance: and the relations of science to it are 
precisely the same as to all the other arts — to ascertain 
their conditions, and give law to their processes. What 
it has done for navigation, telegraphy, and w\ar, it will 
also do for culture." 

The educator of the mind ought, then, to be acquainted 
with its phenomena and its natural operations ; he ought 
to know whit the mind does when it perceives, remem- 
bers, judges, etc., as well as the general laws which gov- 
ern these processes. He sees these processes in action 
continually in his pupils, and has thus abundant oppor- 
tunities for studying them objectively. He is conscious 
of them, too, in his own intellectual life, and there may 
study them subjectively ; but the investigation, thus 
limited, is confessedly difficult, and will be much facil- 
itated by his making an independent study of them as 



68 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

embodied in the science of Psychology or Mental Phil- 
osophy. This science deals with everything which 
belongs to the art which he is daily practising, will 
explain to him some matters which he has found diffi- 
cult, will open his eyes to others which he has failed to 
see, will suggest to him the importance of truths which 
he has hitherto deemed valueless ; and, in short, the 
mastery of it will endow him with a power of which he 
will constantly feel the influence in his practice. His 
pupils are continually engaged in observing outward 
objects, ascertaining their nature by analysis, comparing 
them together, classifying them, gaining mental concep- 
tions of them, recalling these conceptions by memory, 
judging of their relations to each other, reasoning on 
these relations, imagining conceptions, inventing new 
combinations of them, generalizing by induction from 
particulars, verifying these generalizations by deduction 
to particulars, tracing effects to causes and causes to 
effects. Now, every one of these acts forms a part of 
the daily mental life of the pupils whom the educator is 
to train. Will not the educator, who understands them 
as a part of his science, be more competent to direct them 
to profitable action than one who merely recognizes 
them as a part of his em])irical routine? Suppose that 
the object is to cultivate the power of observation. Now 
the power of observation may vary inaccuracy from the 
careless glance which leaves scarcely any impression 
behind it, to the close penetrating scrutiny of the expe- 
rienced observer, which leaves nothing vmseen. Mr. 
J. S. Mill (Logic i. 408) has pointed out the difference 
betwe«dn observers. "One man," he says, " from inat- 
tention, or attending only in the wrong place, overlooks 



INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION. 69 

half of what he sees ; another sets down much more than 
he sees, confounding it with what he imagines, or with 
what he infers; another takes note of the hind of all the 
circumstances, but, being inexpert in estimating their 
degree^ leaves the quantity of each vague and uncertain ; 
another sees indeed the Avhole, but makes such awkward 
division of it into parts, throwing things into one mass 
which ought to be separated, and separating others 
which might more conveniently be considered as one, 
that the result is much the same, sometimes even worse, 
than if no analysis had been attempted at all. To point 
out," he proceeds, " what qualities of mind, or modes of 
mental culture, fit a man for being a good observer, is a 
question whicli belongs to the theory of education. There 
are rules of self-culture which render us cajoable of 
observing, as there are arts for strengthening the limbs." 
But to return to our educator, who, having been edu- 
cated himself in Mental Science, desires to make his 
pupils good observers. He recognizes the fact that, to 
make them observe accurately, he must first cultivate 
the senses concerned in observing ; he must train the 
natural eye to see, that is, to perceive accurately — by 
no means an instinctive faculty ; for this he must culti- 
vate the power of attention ; he must lead them to per- 
ceive the parts in the whole, the whole in the parts, of 
the object observed, calling on the analytical faculty for 
the first operation, the synthetical for the second ; he 
must invite comparison with other like and unlike 
objects, for the detection of difference in the one ease, 
and of similarity in the other, and so on. Is it probable 
that the teacher entirely ignorant of the science of 
Psychology, and the educator furnished with its re- 



10 THEORY OF EDUCATIOlSr. 

sources, will make their respective pupils equally accur- 
ate observers ? 

It would not be difficult to show that a knowledge of 
Logic, as "■ the science of reasoning " or of the formal 
laws of thought should also be a part of the equipment 
of the accomplished educator. The power of reasoning 
is a natural endowment of his pupils ; but the power of 
correct reasoning, like that of observing, requires train- 
ing and cultivation. But we cannot dwell on this point. 

In further illustration of the main argument, I beg to 
refer to ray hearers to the very ingenious lecture lately 
delivered at this College by my friend Mr. Lake, on 
" The Application of Mental Science to Teaching," and 
especially to teaching Writing, wherein he shows that 
even that mechanical art may be made a means of real 
mental training to the pupil. He proves that Muscular 
Sensibility, Sensation, Thought, Will, as well as the 
nascent sense of Artistic Taste, are all involved in the 
subjective process of the pupil ; that in accordance with 
this, the educated educator frames the objective process, 
through which he develops the pupil's mind, and to some 
extent his moral character, and thus makes him a practi- 
cal proficient in his art. Mr. Lake's lecture is probably 
the first attempt ever made to show the direct practical 
bearing of physiological and psychological knowledge 
on the art of teaching, and deserves the thoughtful con- 
sideration of all educators. This same Mental Science 
is also applicable to the teaching of Reading and Arith- 
metic. Indeed, I am persuaded — and I speak from some 
experience — that these elementary arts may be so taught 
as to become, not only " instruction," but true " educa- 
tion," lo the child ; not merely, as they are generally 



Moral education. ^1 

regarded, "instruments of education," but education 
itself. Observation, memory, judgment, reasoning, in- 
vention, an<l pleasurable associations with the art of 
learning, may all be cultivated by a judicious applica- 
tion of the principles of Mental Science. Mulhauser, 
and Manly (of the City of London School), have proved 
this for Writing, Jacotot for Reading, and Pestalozzi 
for Arithmetic. When this truth is acknowledged, it 
will be felt more generally than it is now, that the most 
pretentious schemes and curricula of education are, after 
all, comparatively valueless if they do not secure for the 
pupil the power of doing common things well. This, how- 
ever, is a theme which would require a lecture by itself 
for its adequate treatment. 

Moral Education. 

But the child whom we have considered as the object 
of the educator's operations has moral as well as physi- 
cal and intellectual faculties ; and the development of 
these, with the view of forming character, is a transcen- 
dently important part of the educator's work. This 
child has feelings, desires, a will and a conscience, which 
are to be developed and guided. Here, too, as in the 
other cases, Nature has given elementary teaching, and 
elicited desultory and instinctive action ; but her lessons 
are insufficient, and require to be supplemented by the 
educator's. 

The chilcf, as ah'eady said, is a moral being, but his 
moral principles are crude and inconsistent. Acted on 
by the impulse of the moment, he follows out the prompt, 
ings of his will, w^ithout any regard to personal or rela- 
tive consequences ; and if the will is naturally strong- 



72 THEORY OP EDUCATlOi^. 

even the experience of injurious consequences does not, 
of itself, restrain hira. Self-love induces hira to regard 
everything that he wishes to possess as rightfully his 
own. He says by his actions, " Creation's heir, the world 
— the world is mine." He is therefore indifferent to the 
rights of others, and resents all oposition to his self-seek- 
ing. He is also indifferent to the feelings of others, and 
often tyrannizes over those who are weaker than him- 
self. His unbounded curiosity impels him incessantly to 
gain knowledge. Hs examines everything that interests 
him ; acquires both ideas and expressions by listening to 
conversations ; breaks his toys to see how they are 
made; displays also his constructive ability by cutting 
out boats and paper figures. But he has sympathy as 
well as curiosity. He makes friends, learns to love 
them, to yield up his own inclinations to theirs ; imi- 
tates their sayings and doings, good and bad ; adopts 
their notions, becomes like them. He has also a con- 
science, which, when awakened, decides, though in an 
uncertain manner, on the moral quality of his actions ; 
and lastly he has a will, which is swayed by this self- 
love, curiosity, sympathy, and conscience. 

This is a slight sketch of the moral forces which the 
educator has to control and direct. Now every teacher 
is conscious that he can, and does every day, by his per- 
sonal character, by the economic arrangements of the 
school, by his general discipline, by special treatment of 
individual cases, exercise a considerable influence over 
these moral phenomena ; and must confess that the ex- 
tent of this influence is generally measured by his own 
knowledge of human nature, and that when he fails it is 
because he forgets or is ignorant of some elementary 



MORAL EDUCATION. 73 

principle of that nature. If he allou^s this, he must al- 
low that a larger acquaintance with the principles on 
which human beings act, — the motives which influence 
them, — the objects at which they commonly aim, — the 
passions, desires, characters, manners which appear in 
the world around him and his own constitution, — would 
proportionately increase his influence. 

But these are the very matters illustrated by the Sci- 
ence of Morals, or Moral Philosophy, and the educator 
will be greatly aided in his work by knowing its leading 
principles. 

For what is the object of moral training? Is it not 
to give a wise direction to the moral powers, — to en- 
courage virtuous inclinations, sentiments and passions, 
and to repress those that are evil, — to cultivate habits of 
truthfulness, obedience, industry, temperance, prudence, 
and respect for tlie rights of others, with a view to the 
formation of character ? 

This enumeration of the objects of moral training 
presents a wide field of action for the educator ; yet a 
single day's experience in any large school will probably 
supply the occasion for his dealing with every one of 
them. How important it is, then, that he should be well 
furnished with resources. 

Every earnest educator, moreover, will confess that 
he has much to learn, especially in morals, from his pu- 
pils. To be successful, he must study his own charac- 
ter in theirs, as well as theirs in his own. Coleridge has 
well put this in these lines : — 

" O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule, 
And sun thee in the light of happy faces ? 
Love, Hope, and Patience — these must be thy graces ; 
And in thine own heart let them first keep school." 



74 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

A little story from Chaucer illustrates the same point. 
I give it in his own words : — "A philosopher, upon a 
tyme, that wolde have bete his disciple for his grete 
trespas, for which he was greatly anioeved, and brought 
a yerde to scourge the child ; and when the child saugh 
the yerde, he sayde to his master, * What thenke ye to 
do ? 'I wolde bete the,' quod the master, *' for thi cor- 
rectioun.' *Forsothe,' quod the child, * ye oughte first 
correcte youresilf that han lost al youie pacience for the 
gilt of a child.' 'Forsothe,' quod the maister, al wepy- 
ing, 'thou saist soth ; have thou the yerde, my deere 
sone, and correcte me for myn impatience.'" This mas- 
ter was learning, we see, in the school of his own heart, 
and his pupil was his teacher. 

Time does not allow of our entering more in detail 
into the question of moral training, and showing that 
the great object of moral, like that of physical and in- 
tellectual education, is to develop force, with a view to 
the pupil's self-action. Unless this point is gained — and 
it cannot be gained by preceptive teaching — little is 
gained. Our pupil's character is not to be one merely 
for holiday show, but for the daily duties of life — a 
character which will not be the sport of every wind of 
doctrine, but one in which virtue — moral strength, — is 
firmly embodied. Such a character can only be formed 
bymakmg the child himself a co-operator in the process 
of formation. 

If I have not specially referred to religious, as a part 
of moral education, it is because no truly religious edu- 
cator can fail to make it a part of his system of means. 
As for the case of the teacher whose every-day life 
shows that he is not influenced himself by the religion 



DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-ACTIVITY. V5 

which he, as a matter of form, imposes upon his pupils, 
1 have great difficulty in conceiving of him as a teacher 
of morals at all. 

I have now completed the general view I proposed to 
take of the relation of the educator to his work; and the 
gist of all that I have said is contained in the simple 
proposition, that he ought to know his business, if he 
wishes to accomplish his objects in the best way. The 
deductions from this proposition are, — that, as his busi- 
ness consists in training physical, mental, and moral 
forces, he ought to understand the nature of these 
forces, both in their statical and dynamical condition, 
at rest and in action, and should therefore study Phy- 
siology, Psychology, Ethics, and Logic, which explain 
and illustrate so many of the phenomena;* that he 
should, moreover, study them, as embodied in the prac- 
tice of the great masters of the art. Inspired thus with 
a noble ideal of his work, he will gradually realize it in 
his practice, and become an accomplished educator. He 
will meet with many difficulties in this self-training, but 
the advantages he gains will more than compensate him. 
None can know better than himself — none so well — the 
trials, disappointments, fainting of heart, and defeats 
that his utmost skill cannot always turn into victories, 
which he will have to encounter; but then, on the other 
hand, few can know as he does those moments of won- 

*Tlie late Mr. Fletcher, Inspector of Schools, thus enforces the same 
doctrine :— "The intellectual faculties can never be exercised thoroughly 
but by men of sound logical training, perfect in the art of teaching; 
hence there exist so few highly-gifted teachers. In fact, there are none 
but men of some genius who are said to have peculiar tact, which it is 
impossible to imitate; but I am anxious to see every part of the fine art 
of instruction redeemed from hopeless concealment under such a word, 
and made the subject of rational study and improved training." 



76 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

derfiil liappiness which fall to his lot when he sees his 
work going on well; when, in the improved health, the 
increased intellectual and moral power of his pupils, he 
recognizes the result of measures which he has devised, 
of principles which he has learnt from the school with- 
out, from the school within, and from the ripe experi- 
ence and thought of the fellow-laborers of his craft. At 
such moments, fraught with the spirit of the great ar- 
tist, who exclaimed in his enthusiasm, "Ed ioanche sono 
pittore ; " he also exclaims, " And I too am an educa- 
ioY ! " This enthusiasm will be more common when edu- 
cators entertain a more exalted conception of their pro- 
fession. 

That the educator cannot fully realize his conception, 
is no argument against his keeping it constantly in view, 
to stimulate his zeal and guide his practice. The educa- 
tion of aims and achievements must, after all, be an in- 
determinate one; bat we approach nearer and nearer to 
its solution, by a high assumption for the aims. " We 
strive," as Coleridge says, " to ascend, and we ascend in 
our striving." Nothing has been said of the value of 
Physiology, Psychology, etc., to the educator merely as 
a man, not as a professional man. But it is easy to see 
that it must be great. Nor have they been pointed out 
as subjects of direct instruction for his pupils; yet surely 
it is important that he should be able to give in his class- 
es elementary lessons on all these subjects, particularly 
on Physiology. The nomenclature, at least, and the ru- 
diments of Psychology may be advantageously learned 
by elder pupils, and the elements of Logic should cer- 
tainly form a part of the instruction of students of Eu- 
clid and grammatical analysis. 



1 



THE TEACHER TRAINED. ' YY 

But beyond the theoretical treatment of the Science of 
Education, I have a practical object in view. I wish to 
show that there is a strong presumption that the educa- 
tor of our day needs education in his art. Individual 
teachers may deny this for themselves — they generally 
do — but they freely admit it with reg^ard to their ri- 
vals in the next street, or the next town. Generalize 
this admission, and all we ask for isgranted. But there 
is a test of a different kind which disposes of the ques- 
tion — the test of results. "By their fruits ye shall 
know them." If the fruit is good, the tree is good. If 
the large majority of schools are in a satisfactory con- 
dition, then the educator is doing his work well; for 
" as is the master, so is the school " — which means, to 
speak technically, that the results of a system of educa- 
tion are not as the capabilities of the pupil, nor as the 
external school machinery, but as the professional pre- 
paredness of the educator. If, then, the large majority 
of schools are unsatisfactory, it is because the teacher is 
unsatisfactory. And that they are so, is proved by 
every test that can be applied. All the Commissions on 
Education — whether primary, secondary, or advanced — 
tell the same tale, pronounce the same verdict of failure; 
and that verdict would, have been more decided had the 
judges been themselves educators. Dealing with a sub- 
ject which they know mostly as amateurs, not as ex- 
perts, they are not competent to estimate the results by 
a scientific standard; they therefore reckon as good 
much that is really bad; for the value of a result in edu- 
cation mainly depends on the manner in which it has 
been gained. Yet even these estimators severally de- 
clare that the educational machinery of this country is 



78 Theory of EDucAxioisr* 

working immensely under the theoretical estimate of its 
power. The "scandalously small" results of the Public 
School education are parallelled or exceeded by those of 
the Middle Class and Primary Schools; and in cases of 
primary schools where this epithet would not apply, we 
find that the superiority is due to the preliminary train- 
ing of the teacher. 

What, again, is to be said of the evidence furnished 
by such a statement as the following, which we extract 
from the Athenceum of March 27, 1869: — " A petition was 
last week presented to the House of Commons from the 
Council of Medical Education, stating that the main- 
tenance of a sufiicient medical education is very difficult, 
owing to the defective education given in middle class 
schools. A similar complaint was made in a petition 
from the British Medical Association, numbering 4,000 
members. In a third petition, proceeding from the Uni- 
versity of London, it was stated that during the last 10 
years 40 per cent, [it has since been more than 50 per 
cent.] of the candidates at the Matriculation examina- 
tions have failed to satisfy the examiners." 

Once more. Sir John Lefevre, describing, in 1861, the 
mental condition of the candidates for the Civil Service 
who came before him for examination, refers to '■ the 
incredible failures in orthography, the miserable writ- 
ing, the ignorance of arithmetic. " It is comparatively 
rare," he says, " to find a candidate who can add cor- 
rectly a moderately long column of figures." Some 
improvement has taken j^lace, no doubt, during the last 
ten years under the influence of the examination of the 
College of Preceptors, and those of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, but the main difficulty remains much the same. 



INEFFICIENCY OF PRESENT TEACHING. 19 

This, then, is the evidence, or rather a part of the evi- 
dence which attests the unsatisfactory results of our 
middle-class teaching. But we repeat, " as are the teach- 
ers, so are the schools ;" and, therefore, without hesita- 
tion make the teachers directly responsible for these 
results. Had they been masters of their art, these results 
would have been impossible; and they are not masters 
of their art, because they have not studied its principles, 
nor been scientifically trained in its practice. 

The true remedy has been suggested by many eminent 
men, not merely by teachers. It consists in teaching 
the teacher how to teach, in training the trainer, in edu- 
cating the educator. 

Thus, Dr. Gull, after complaining of the insufficient 
education of youths who are to study medicine, said 
(Evidence before Schools 'Enquiry Commission) that 
*' improvement must begin with the teachers. Anyone 
is allowed to teach. There is no testing of the teachers. 
I think he should be examined as to his power of teach- 
ing and his knowledge." "The subjects (for his pre- 
paration) should include the training of the senses, and 
the intellect, and the teaching of the moral relations of 
man to himself and his neighbor." Mr. Robson, in his 
evidence before the same Commission, said, " We should 
require certificates of teachers showing that knowledge 
has been attained, and also some knowledge of Mental 
Philosophy in connection with the art of teaching. Ev- 
ery teacher has to act on the human mind, and unless he 
knows the best methods of so acting, it is quite impossi- 
ble he can exercise his powers to the best advantage." 
The evidence of Messrs. Howson, Besant, Goldwin Smith, 
Best, and others, was to the same effect. 



80 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

The assistant Commissioners, Messrs. Bryce, Fearon, 
and especially Mr. Fitch, make the same complaints of 
the want of training for the teacher. Mr. Fitch — who 
has every right to be heard on such a point, for he thor- 
oughly knows the subject, practically as well as theoreti- 
cally — says, in his report on Yorkshire Endowed and 
Private Schools, " Nothing is more striking than the very 
general disregard on the part of schoolmasters of the 
Art and Science of Teaching. Few have any special 
preparation in it. Professional training for middle-class 
schoolmasters does not exist in this country. It is cer- 
tain that many of them would gladly obtain it, if it were 
accessible. But at present it is not to be had." And 
again, " It is a truth very imperfectly recognized by 
teachers, that the education of a youth depends not only 
on what he learns, but on how he learns it, and that 
some power of the mind is being daily improved or 
injured by the methods which are adopted in teaching 
him." Mr. Fitch, in another place,* also remarks, *' We 
all know instances of men who understand a subject 
thoroughly, and who are yet utterly incapable of teach- 
ing it. We have all seen that waste of power and loss 
of time continually result from the tentative, haphazard, 
and unskilful devices to which teachers of this kind 
resort. Yet we seem slow to admit the obvious infer- 
ence from such experience. The art of teaching, like 
other arts, must be systematically acquired. The pro- 
fession of a schoolmaster is one for which no man is duly 
qualified who has not studied it thoroughly, both in its 
principles and in their practical application." 

The Rev. Evan Daniel, principal of Battersea Normal 

♦ ** The Professional Training of Teacliers." 



UNIVERSITY EDUCATION INSUFFICIENT. 81 

School, aptly describes the two main classes of middle- 
class teachers. 1st. University men, "not infrequently 
of distinguished ability and scholarship. Few of them, 
however, have had the advantage of professional train- 
ing. They enter on their work with but a slight knowl- 
edge of child-lif*^; they have never studied the psycho- 
logical principles on which education should be based; 
they are almost utterly ignorant of the best modes of 
teaching, of organizing, and of maintaining discipline." 
These are the teachers, rather the would-be teachers, 
who, as a distinguished Head Master told us some time 
ago in the Times, are to be allowed to find out their art 
by victimizing their pupils for two whole years before 
they become worth anything to their profession. But 
Mr. Daniel also refers to the other class of teachers, 
who, besides wanting everything that the former class 
want, also want their mental cultivation, and remain 
" in a state of intellectual stagnation, discharging their 
duties in a half-hearted perfunctory spirit, and finding 
them twice as hard and disagreeable as they need be, 
from the want of suitable preparation for them." 

The arguments then from theory and those from facts 
meet at this point, and demand with united force that 
the educator shall be educated for his profession. But 
how is this to be brought about ? What is doing in 
furthenince of this most important object ? The answer 
to the question must be brief, and shows rather tentative 
efforts than accomplished facts. 

1. The training of teachers for primary schools is 
going on satisfactorily in the N^ormal Colleges of the 
National and British and foreign School Societies, so that 
what is asked for middle-class teachers is evidently pos- 



82 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

ible. They can be trained into better teachers than 
they are. 

2. This training of the middle-class teachers, which 
some decry as quackery and others as useless, is actually 
going on in France and Germany most satisfactorily. 
In both countries, highly cultivated and efficient educa- 
tors, with whom the majority of English teachers would 
have no chance of competing, are the everyday product 
of their respective systems of training. 

3. Our Government, in the Educational Council Bill, 
for the present withdrawn, provided " that all teachers 
of endowed schools should be registered, as persons 
whose qualifications for teaching have been ascertained 
by examinations, or by proved efficiency in teaching on 
evidence satisfactory to the Council; " and that teachers 
of private schools might also be entered on the registry, 
by showing similar qualifications. 

4. The Scholastic Registration Association, having 
for its object ** the discouragement of unqualified per- 
sons from assuming the office of schoolmaster or 
teacher," has obtained a large share of public approval, 
and numbers among its members many head-masters of 
public schools and colleges, as Drs. Hornby, Kennedy, 
Haig-Brown (President of the Association), Thring, 
CoUis, Weymouth, Schmitz, Rigg, Donaldson, Jones, 
Mitchinson, the Revs. E. A. Abbott and F. W. Farrar, 
and many other distinguished friends of education. 

6. The College of Preceptors, too, by the institution 
of this Lectureship, by the re-constitution of its Exami- 
nations for Teachers, and by its recent memorial to the 
Government on Training Colleges, is showing itself fully 
alive to the importance of the subject. Its new exami- 



PRESENT MEANS FOR TRAINING. 83 

nations have just taken place, and candidates have foj. 
the first time been examined on the principles of Physi- 
ology, Psychology, Moral Philosophy and Logic, and 
their application to the art of teaching, as well on their 
own personal experience as educators. The results have 
shown how deeply needed is this knowledge of princi- 
ples; out of fifteen candidates only three have satisfied 
examiners. We still hope, however, by placing a high 
standard before the candidates, and requiring an earnest 
study of the subjects of examination, to make our 
diplomas certificates of real qualification, as far as writ, 
ten and viva voce examinations can test it. 

Yet the real desideratum, after all, is Training Col- 
leges for middle-class teachers. Professorships of Educa- 
tion at our leading Universities, and more, perhaps, than 
all, a nobler conception of education itself among Eng. 
lish teachers. 



THE THEORY OF EDUCATION -ANALYSIS. 



I. Preliminary Considerations. 

1. Theory vs. Practice .49 

2. Education and Instruction defined 50-53 

{a) Unconscious Education 51 

(h) Conscious Education 53 

3. Function of the Educator 53 

{a) Knowledge of his pupils 53 

(6) Means adopted to direct them... 54 

II. Justification oj the Science of Education 54 

1. Objections considered: 

(a) That it is quackery 55 

ih) That it is not "practical"... ...55 

(c) Tliat it is not possible. . . .57 

2. Every act has a scientific basis 58 

{a) Evils of routine teaching 58 

a The pupil a slave 59 

fS The teacher an empiric 60 

3. The "why" as well as the "what" 60 

4. Experience of others made available 61 

III. Help afforded hy the Science of Education 62 

1. Physical Education -63 

{a) Need of physiological knowledge 63 

a Ventilation 63 

(J) A sound mind in a sound body 65 

(c) Self-education not sufficient — 67 

2. Intellectual Education. 67 

{a) Need of Mental Philosophy 68 

a Cultivation of observing powers 70 

/i Instruction in Logic 70 

y Writing, Reading, Arithmetic -71 

84 



ANALYSIS. 85 

3. Moral Education... 72 

{a) The child's natural impulses 72 

a Self-love, ft Curiosity, y Sympathy, 8 Conscience, 

a Will 72 

{h) Importance of Mental Philosophy ...73 

a Objects of moral training 74 

ft The teacher often the learner 74 

(c) Object to develop self-action 75 

IV. The Teacher must Know his Business 76 

1. The majority of schools unsatisfactory... 76 

2. Due to inefficiency of teachers. 80 

3. Corrected only by training of teachers 80 

(a) University education insufficient 81 

ip) Present means for training in England .83 



THE PRA.CTICE OR ART OF EDDCATIOK- 



The Theory of Education, as explained in the former 
Lecture, consists in an appreciation of the influences 
which must be brought to bear intentionally, consciously, 
and persistently on a child, with a view to instruct him 
in knowledge, develop his faculties, and train them to 
the formation of habits. It was shown that this view 
of Education assumes that the educator must himself 
study and comprehend the nature of these influences; 
and that this theoretical study, aided by the lessons of 
experience, both personal and that of others, constitutes 
his own education. 

Assuming, then, the education of the educator him- 
self, which involves a due conception of the end in view, 
we have now to consider some of the means by which 
he has to realize it, and this constitutes the Practice or 
Art of Education. 

I have already disclaimed the idea of attempting to 
construct a symmetrical science of education, and am 
not bound therefore to deduce a symmetrical art from a 
theoretical ideal. Nor is this necessary; for whatever 
may be said of the Theory, there is no doubt that the 
Art of Education exists, and that its fundamental prin- 
ciples can be evolved from its practice. 

The Art of Education, strictly considered, involves 

* Delivered at the House of the Society of Arts, on I4th July, 1871, 
J. G. Fitch, Esq., in the chair. 
86 



LEARNING IS SELF-TEA.OHIJSrG. 87 

all the means by which the educator brings his influence 
to bear on his pupils, and embraces therefore organiza- 
tion, discipline, school economics, the regulation of 
studies, etc. Our limited space, however, forbids our 
entering on these matters, and the " Art of Education " 
will in this lecture be considered as only another term 
for Teaching or Instruction 

If we observe the process which we call instruction, 
we see two parties conjointly engaged — the learner and 
the teacher. The object of both is the same, but their 
relations to the work to be done are different. Inas- 
much as the object can only be attained by the mental 
action of the learner, by his observing, remembering, 
etc., it is clear that what he does, not w^hat the teacher 
does, is the essential part of the process. This essential 
part, the appropriation and assimilation of knowledge 
by the mind, can be performed by no one but the 
learner; for the teacher can no more think for his pupil, 
than he can walk, sleep, or digest for him. It is then on the 
exercise of the pupil's own mind that his acquisition of 
knowledge entirely depends, and this subjective process, 
performed entirely by himself, constitutes the pupil's 
art of learning. If, however, every act by which ideas 
from without become incorporated with the pupil's 
mind is an act which can only be performed by the 
pupil himself, it follows that he is in fact his own 
teacher, and we arrive at the general proposition, that 
learning is self -teaching . This psychological principle is of 
cardinal importance in the art of education. We see at 
once that it defines the function of the teacher, the 
other party in the process of instruction. It appears, 
from what has been just said, that the only indispensable 



88 PEA.CTICE OF EDUCATION. 

part of the process — the mental act by which knowledge 
is acquired — is the pupil's, not the teacher's; and, indeed, 
that the teacher cannot, if he would, perform it for the 
pu] il. On the other hand, the experience of mankind 
shows that the pupil, however capable, would not gen- 
erally undertake his part spontaneously, nor, if he did, 
carry it to a successful issue. The indispensable part 
of the process cannot, it is true, be done without the 
mental exertion of the pupil, but it is equally true that 
it will not be done without the action and influence of 
the teacher. The teacher's part^ then, in the process of instruc- 
tion is that of a guide, director, or superintendent of the opera- 
tions hy which the pupil teaches himself.^ 

As this view of the correlation of learning and teach- 
ing assumes the competency of the pupil to teach him- 
self, it may of course be theoretically disputed. It is 
important, then, to add that the child whom the teacher 
takes in hand has already learned or taught himself a 
great number of things. He has, in fact, learned the 
use of his senses, the qualities of matter, and the ele- 
ments of his mother-tongue, without the aid of any 
professed teacher. The faculties, however, by the use 
of which he has made these acquisitions, are the same 
that he must employ in his further acquisitions, when 
the action and influence of natural circumstances are 
superseded by those of the professed teacher. 

A slight review of the operation of these natural cir- 



*" To teach boys how to instruct themselves— that, after all, is the 
great end of school-work."— Markby. 

"The object of all education is to teach people to tlunk for them- 
selves."— '*C7?ii'yersi(i/ Extension,'^ an Address delivered at the request of 
the Leeds Ladies' Education Association, by James Stuart, Fellow and 
Assistant Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge. 



HOW NATtJEE TEACHES. 89 

cumstances — which we may for convenience' sake call 
Nature — will serve to suggest some of the means by 
which the teacher, as a superintendent of the pupil's 
process of self-instruction, is to exercise his proper ac- 
tion and influence. 

How, then, does nature teach ? She furnishes knowl- 
edge by object-lessons, and she trains the active powers 
by making them act. She has given capability of ac- 
tion, and she develops this capability by presenting oc- 
casions for its exercise. She makes her pupil learn to 
do by doing, to live by living. She gives him no gram- 
mar of seeing, hearing, etc.; she gives him no compen- 
diums of abstract principles. She would stop his pro- 
gress at the very threshold, if she did. Action! action! 
is her maxim of training; and things! things! are the 
objects of of her lessons. She adopts much repetition in 
her teaching, in order that the difficulty may become 
easy, "use becomes a second nature." Tn pliysical train- 
ing, " use legs and have legs," is one of her maxims, and 
she acts analogously, in regard to mental and moral 
training. She teaches quietly. She does not continu- 
ally interrupt her pupil, even when he blunders, by out- 
cries and objurgations. She bides her time, and by 
prompting him to continued action, and inducing him 
to think about what he is doing, and correct his 
errors himself, makes his very blunders fruitful in 
instruction. She does not anxiously intervene to pre- 
vent the consequences of his actions; she allows hiin co 
experience them, that he may learn prudence; some- 
times even letting him burn his lingers, that he may 
gain at once a significant lesson in physics, and also 
learn the moral lesson involved in the ministry of pain. 



90 rHACTici: of education 

These are some of the features of I^ature^s Art of 
Education, and they are all con:istent with the assump- 
tion that throughout her course of instruction the pupil 
is teaching himself. 

We infer, then, from these considerations, that the 
child whose instruction is to be secured by the guidance 
of the teacher has already shown his capacity to learn, 
and to learn, moreover, without explanations. We remark, 
further, that an accurate analysis of this process of self- 
tuition, based on the combined observations and experi- 
ments of teachers carefully noted and compared to- 
gether, and generalized into principles of education, will, 
no doubt, in time to come, furnish the true canons of 
the art of teaching, or, in other words, that the pupil's 
subjective process of learning, when thoroughly under- 
stood, will suggest, with proper limitations, the teach- 
er's counterpart objective process of teaching. 

The principle I am contending for — that the child is 
capable of teaching himself without explanations — is in- 
deed very generally acknowledged in word by teachers, 
who also very generally repudiate it in fact. They al- 
low that it is not what they do for their pupil, but what 
he does for himself, that gives him strength and inde- 
pendent force : but the multitude of directions, pre- 
cepts, warnings, exhortations, and explanations, with 
which they bewilder and enfeeble him, neutralizes their 
theoretical acknowledgment of the principle. Let such 
teachers say what they will, they virtually deny the pu- 
pil's native capacity; they act on the belief that he can- 
not learn without explanations, and especially without 
their explanations. 

This question of the necessity of explanations is a vi 



HOW NATURE TEACHES. 91 

tal point in our argument, and needs further discussion. 
Explaining is " flattening," or *' making level," " clearing 
the ground" so as to produce an even surface; and, 
when applied to teaching, as generally understood, 
means removing obstructions out of the way, so as to 
make the subject clear to the pupil, and generally to do 
this by verbal discourse. 

But (1), we notice that Nature, who makes her pupil 
teach himself gives no explanations of this kind. She 
does not explain ihe difference between hard and soft 
objects — she says, feel them; between this and that fact 
— she says, place them side by side, and mark the differ- 
ence yourself; and generally she says to her pupil, don't 
ask me to tell you any thing that you can find out for 
yourself. 

(2) The question of explanations essentially invf)lves 
those of the order of studies and the method of teach- 
ing. If the subject is unsuited to the pupil's stage of 
instruction, or if, instead of presenting him with facts 
which he can understand, we force upon him abstractions 
which he cannot, we create the need for explanations; 
and in this case it is not merely probable, but certain, 
that most of them, however elaborate, will be thrown 
away. We are, in fact, calling on the immature facul- 
ties for an effort which is beyond the strength of the 
trained intellect; for the man has never lived who can 
understand an abstract general proposition while utterly 
ignorant of the facts on which it is ultimately founded. 
But supposing that we admit the value of explanations 
generally, and that the explanations given are admirably 
clear in themselves, their value to the individual pupil 
will depend, not on their absolute excellence, but on 



92 PEACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

their relation to the condition of his mind. Unless, 
then, the teacher has well studied that mind, so as to 
know its individual history, its actual condition, and its 
needs, much of his explanation will *' waste its sweet- 
ness on the desert air." That portion only will be re- 
ceived and assimilated for which the previous instruc- 
tion has prepared the mind, and all the rest will flow 
away and leave no impression whatever behind it. And, 
in general, it may be laid down as a practical principle 
of teaching, that long elaborate explanations are entirely 
out of place in a class of children. They do not gener- 
ally quicken, but rather quell, attention. The children, 
indeed, consider that, though it may be the teacher's 
duty to preach, it is no necessary part of theirs to heed 
the preaching. This work, as they generally take it, is 
the -proper occasion for their play; and this play, with- 
out outward manifestation, may be going on uproarious- 
ly in that inner playground where the teacher cannot 
set his foot. Rousseau, in his interesting if somewhat 
romantic " Emile," gives the following opinion on this 
subject — I adopt Mr. Quick's translation: — " I do not at 
all admire explanatory discourses; young people give 
little attention to them, and never retain them. Things! 
things! I can never enough repeat it, that we make 
words of too much consequence. With our prating 
modes of education, we make nothing but praters." 

Now in these cases the teacher fails because he does 
not follow Nature. The pupils for whom he *' clears 
the ground " would have cleared it themselves if he had 
known how to direct them, and would have been the 
stronger for the exercise. 

Having thus indicated Nature's art of teaching, as, in 



FAULTS IX NATUKe's TEACHING. 93 

a general way, the archetype of the educator's, it is im- 
portant now to say that it is not to be implicitly followed. 

(1.) Nature's teaching is desultory. She mingles lessons 
in physics, language, morality, all together. Her main 
business seems to be the training of faculty, and she 
subordinates to this the orderly acquisition of knowledge 
by her pupils. We are to imitate Nature in training 
faculty, but with a definite aim as regards subjects. 

(2.) Nature's teaching is often inaccurate; not, however, 
from any defect in her method, but from inherited defects 
in her pupils. If she has not originally given a sound 
brain, she does not generally herself improve upon her 
handiwork. The impressions received by a feeble brain 
become blurred, imperfect conceptions, and Nature 
often leaves them so. It is the educator's business, 
however, to endeavor to improve upon her labors, — to 
ascertain the original fault, and by apt exercises to 
amend it. 

(3.) Nature's teaching often appears to he overdone. She 
gives ten thousand exercises to develop faculty, but she 
continues to give them when that purpose is answered. 
The educator is to imitate her in very frequently repeat, 
ing his lessons, but to cease when the object is gained. 

(4.) Nature does not secure the results of her lessons with a 
direct aim to mental and moral improvement . She exercises 
various powers to a certain extent and with certain ob- 
jects; but she does not prompt to their improvement 
beyond this point, nor exercise them equally upon ob- 
jects unconnected with animal wants and instincts. We 
are to imitate Nature, in gaining such results for our 
pupils as she gains, but we are to go beyond her in 



94 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

securing these results as a means to the attainment of a 
higher platform of knowledge and power. 

(5.) Nature accustoms her pupils to little, and that the sim- 
plest, generalization. For any care that she takes, the 
materials suitable for this process may remain unquick- 
ened throughout the whole of a man's life. The educator 
is to imitate Nature in prompting his pupils to general- 
ize on facts, but to surpass her in carrying them forward 
in practice. 

(6.) Nature is relentless in her discipline. She takes no 
account of extenuating circumstances. To disobey is to 
die. She not only punishes the offender for his offence, 
but often makes liim suffer for the offences of others. 
She involves him in all the consequences of his actions, 
and often gives him no opportunity for repentance. The 
educator, on the other hand, while allowing his pupil to 
be visited by the consequences of his actions, is to pre- 
vent ruinous consequences — to give him room for repent- 
ance, to love the offender while punishing the offence, 
and to allow for extenuating circumstances. 

Nature's teaching, then, while in general the model of 
the educator's, requires adaptation, extension, and cor- 
rection, in order to make the best use of it. The old 
adage, " Art improves Nature," applies undoubtedly to 
the art of education: a truth which even Pestalozzi — 
certainly himself a choice specimen of Nature's teach- 
ing, a head boy in her school — failed, as we shall see, to 
appreciate. 

The upshot of what has been said hitherto is this, that 
the natural process by which the mind acquires knowl- 
edge and power is a process of self-education, — that the 
educator should recognize that process as a guide to his 



GOOD TEACHING ILLUSf RAlED. 0^ 

practice, suggesting both what he should aim at and 
what he should avoid. To this it is very important to 
add, that his success in carrying out his object will 
greatly depend upon his being furnished with the re- 
sources of his science. A thousand unforeseen difficul- 
ties, arising from the individual personal characteristics 
of his pupils, will occur in the progress of his work, and 
demand the exercise of his utmost skill and moral courage 
for their treatment. It is here, quite as much as in the 
normal action of the machinery that he is directing, that 
the value of his own education as an educator will be 
found. It is the "unusual circumstances" referred to 
by Mr. Grove, that call for that " plasticity " — that mul- 
tiform power of applying principles, which distinguishes 
the scientifically trained from the routine teacher. 

I will now illustrate my subject by presenting two 
typical specimens of the Art of Teaching. In the first 
the teacher fully recognizes the competency of his pupils 
to learn or teach themselves without any explanations 
whatever from him, and, accordingly he gives them 
none; at the same time, however, he earnestly employs 
himself in directing the forces under his command, and 
sees in the self-instruction of his pupils, the result of his 
action and influence. In the second instance the teacher 
acts on the presumption that the pupil's success depends 
rather on what is done for him than on what he does for 
himself. 

Suppose that the object be to give a lesson on a sim- 
ple machine — say the pile-driving machine — in its least 
elaborate form. I scarcely need say that it consists of 
two strong uprights, well fastened into a solid, broad 
block of wood, as a basis, and supplied with two thick 



96 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

ropes, one on each side, which are laid over pulleys at 
the top of the uprights, and employed to draw up a 
heavy mass of iron, the fall of which on the head of the 
pile drives it into the earth. Two or three men at each 
rope supply the motive power. 

* Let a large v/orking model of the machine be so placed 
that all the pupils of the class may see and have access 
to it. The teacher's object is to make this machine the 
means of communicating knowledge and of drawing 
forth their intellectual 230wers. He has no need to tell 
them to look at it. The image of it, as a whole, is at 
once impressed upon their minds. The teacher need not 
tax his ingenuity to devise methods for gaining their 
attention. Their attention is already on the full stretch. 
Their curiosity is largely excited — their eyes wide open, 
and "unsatisfied with seeing." — "What can it be? 
What will it do?" He tells them the purpose of it, 
and nothing more, — " It is a contrivance for driving 
piles into the ground." They are eager to see it in 
action. 

It is now at rest, the weight resting on the head of 
the pile. The teacher directs two of the children, one 
on each side, to lay hold of the ropes and pull up the 
weight, telling the class that the weight is called a mon- 
key — a fact which they will certainly remember. [Names 
and conventionalities which they cannot find out for 
themselves, he must, of course, tell them; but telling of 
this kind is not explanation ] Well, the monkey is drawn 
up gradually, until the clutch relaxes its hold, and down 
it falls, to their immense delight. This is the first 
experiment. Let all the children try it — all pull up the 
weight with their own hands, and gain an idea, by per- 



\ THE PUPILS EXPERIMENT. 97 

soiial, individual experience, of the resistance of the 
wijight. This experience involves muscular sensibility, 
sensation, and a rudimentary notion of force. The chil- 
dren by this time, liave an idea of the machine, and 
begin to conceive the relation between the end and the 
means — between the problem to be solved and the means 
of solving it. The pile evidently gives way under the 
repeated blows of the monkey. Let the monkey be 
weighed, and another substituted heavier or lighter. 
What is the result now ? Use the measuring scale to 
see exactly how much the pile moves under the different 
weights. Why are the results different? [These me- 
chanical acts of weighing and measuring exactly are not 
to be despised; they are fraught with j^i'actical instruc- 
tion]. Next, let the height from which the weight falls 
be gradually varied, until there is no height, and the 
weight merely rests on the head of the pile, as at first. 
What is gained by the motion of the weight ? Try the 
experiment many times — weigh, measure, judge. When 
is weight acting alone ? — when along with motion ? The 
children form a conception for themselves of momentum; 
and when the thing is understood the technical name 
may be given. Next, let the weight be detached and 
placed on an inclined plane — a slanting board. Why 
does it move now less easily than it did when it was 
free ? Alter the inclination; try all possible varieties of 
slope. When is the motion easiest ? The pupils gain 
the idea of friction, and may have the name given them. 
Let the clutch be examined. How does it act? Why 
hold the weight so firmly at one moment and let it go 
the next ? Try the experiment, handle it, attach it to 
the weight? Do(s it hold the weight /irmli/ f Why 



98 FRACl'iCE OF EDUClTlONV 

does it let the weight go at the right moment? Again, 
suppose the weight were made of wood, lead, putty, 
etc., instead of iron. Try these substances for the 
weight. Why are they less suitable for the purpose 
than iron ? 

Attach weights to the ropes, and see whether they 
may be so contrived as to supersede the manual labor. 
What are the difficulties in doing this ? Can they be 
overcome ? What is the use of the pulleys ? Remove 
them, and pull at the ropes without them. What dif- 
ference is there now in the ease of motion. 

Could any one devise another machine for driving 
piles, or any other contrivance for doing the work of 
this better ? Let every one think of this before the next 
lesson, and bring his model with him. The teacher suras 
up the results of the lesson, and tells the pupils to write 
them down before him. He examines their papers, and 
makes them correct the blunders themselves. The les- 
son is concluded. 

Now in this lesson we have a typical specimen of the 
self-teaching of the pupils under the superintendence of 
the teacher. If teaching means, as stated in books on 
the subject, the communication of knowledge by the 
explanations of the teacher, he has taught them noth- 
ing. Of that kind of teaching which Mr. Wilson of 
Rugby calls " the most stupid and most didactic " — 
meaning that the most didactic is the most stupid — we 
have here not a trace. The teacher has recognized his 
true function as simply a director of the mental machin- 
ery which is, in fact, to do all the work itself; for it is 
not he, but his pupils, that have to learn, and to learn by 
the exercise of their own minds. He has constituted 



THE TEACHER ONLY A DIRECTOR. 99 

himself, therefore, as (if the expression may be pardoned) 
a sort of outside will and mind, to act on and co-operate 
with the wills and minds of his pupils. He is the primum 
mohih which sets the machinery in motion, and maintains 
and regulates the motion; but the work that it does, the 
results that it gains, are not his work nor his results, but 
the machinery's. In the case of the human machinery — 
the children's minds, which are not dead matter, but 
living organisms — he has had to supply motives to 
action, sympathy and encouragement — to apply, indeed 
all the resources of his science. But still he is simply 
the superintendent or director of the operations which 
constitute the learning or self-teaching of the pupils; 
and the intrusion of those explanations, which some con- 
sider the essence of teaching, would have hindered and 
frustrated the efficiency of those operations. For, in 
the case before us, why should he explain, and what has 
he to explain ? The machine is its own interpreter. It 
answers those who interrogate it in the emphatic and 
eloquent language of facts — a language which the chil- 
dren understand without explanations; and it practises 
them abundantly in what Professor Huxley aptly calls 
ihe " logic of experiment; " and if it says nothing about 
abstractions and first principles, which they could not 
comprehend, it lays before them the proper groundwork 
for these mental deductions, ready for the superstruct- 
ure of science when the proper time comes. And until 
this groundwork of facts is laid, the teacher may strain 
his mind and break his heart in his anxiety to give 
explanations. In fact, none that he can give will be 
equal in value to those given silently, powerfully, and 
effectually by the machine itself. It is clear^ then, that 



100 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

nothing would be gained by his explanations, and that 
they are therefore unnecessary. 

Without dwelling now on all the points of interest 
contained in the lesson that I have described, which 
will be summarized hereafter, I invite attention espe- 
cially to two or three. 

(1.) We notice the pleasureable feeling of the children 
thus actively engaged in the free exercise of their own 
powers — seeing, handling, experimenting, discovering, 
investigating, and invenling for themselves. This feel- 
ing will, by the necessary laws of association, always 
accompany the remembrance of the lesson. Is not this 
in itself an immense gain both for teacher and pupils ? 

But (2) there is another very important gain for the 
pupils educating themselves. It is an approved principle 
of the science of education that it should be the aim of 
the educator not merely to train faculty, but to induce 
in his pupils tlie power of exercising it without his aid — 
in other words, to make the pupils independent of the 
teacher. Now, if as in the case before us, the children 
have gained their knowledge by the exercise of their 
own faculties — have observed, experimented, etc., for 
themselves, they cannot but have gained a rudimentary 
consciousness that they could, without the teacher, go 
through the same process in acquiring the knowledge of 
another machine. This consciousness of power, may, as 
I have said, be, at the end of the first lesson, merely 
rudimentary; but it will gain strength as they proceed, 
and the final result of such teaching will be that they 
will acquire the valuable habit of independent mental 
self-direction. An eminent French teacher used to be 
laughed at for saying that he was continually aiming to 



\ PUPILS BECOiME DISCOVERERS. 101 

make himself useless to his pupils. The silly laughers 
thought that he iiad made a blunder, and meant to say 
— useful. But they were the blunderers. 

(3.) It is a noticeable point in the process described 
that it led the children to discover, investigate, and 
invent on their own account. They were continually 
conscious of the pleasure of finding things out for them- 
selves. They were continually making advances, how- 
ever feeble, in the very path that the first discoverers of 
knowledge of the same kind, and indeed of every kind, 
had trod before them. Though only little children, 
they were unconsciously adopting the method of the 
scientific investigator, and becoming trained, though as 
yet but very imperfectly, in his spirit. Should they sub- 
sequently iiive themselves up to scientific inquiry, they 
will not change their method, for it is even now essen- 
tially that of scientific investigation. The value of this 
plan of learning is aptly pointed out in a well-known 
passage from Burke's essay on " The Sublime and Beau- 
tiful." "I am convinced," he says, "that the method 
of teachincr [or learning] which approaches most nearly 
to the method of investigation is incomparably the best; 
since, not content with serving up a few barren and life- 
less truths [such as abstractions, general propositions, 
formulae, etc.], it leads to the stock on which they grew; 
it tends to set the reader [or learner] himself on the 
track of invention, and to direct him into those paths in 
which the author [or scientific investigator] has made 
his own discoveries." It is obvious that our children, 
engaged in investigating and discovering for themselves, 
were precisely in the position, with regard to their sub- 
ject, which is described in these words, 



102 PRACTICE OF EDTTCATION. 

But their native inventive faculty was also exercised. 
They vk^ould be sure, before the next lesson, to take the 
hint given them by the teacher, and would be ready with 
various contrivances for modifying the pile-driving 
machine. When I say this I speak from experience, not 
conjecture. 1 have myself, when engaged in reading a 
simple narrative with a class of children, and meeting 
with a reference to some gate to be burst open by 
mechanical means, or some bridge to be extemporized 
in a difficult emergency, simply said, " try to invent a 
contrivance for accomplishing these objects, and show 
me to-morrow your notions by a drawing and descrip- 
tion," and have never failed to receive a number of rude 
sketches of schemes more or less suited to the purpose, 
but all showing the intense interest excited by the devo- 
tion of their minds to the object. I am persuaded that 
teachers generally overlook half the powers latent in 
the minds of their pupils; they do not credit children 
with the possession of them, and therefore fail to call 
them out. An instructive instance of a different mode 
of proceeding is furnished by the experience of Profes- 
sor Tyndall, when he was a teacher in Queen wood 
School. The quotation is rather long, but it is too val- 
uable to be omitted. " One of the duties," he says, in 
his Lecture at tlie Royal Institution, On the Study of 
Physics as a branch of Education, " was the instruction 
of a class in mathematics, and I usually found that 
Euclid, and the ancient geometry generally, when 
addressed to the understanding, formed a very attract- 
ive study for youth. But [mark the hut .'] it was my 
habitual practice to withdraw the boys from the routine 
of the book, and to appeal to their self-power in the 



PROF. TYNDALL^S EXPERIMENT. 103 

treatment of questions not compiebended in that routine. 
At first the change from the beaten track usually excited 
a little aversion; the youtli felt like a child among 
strangers; but in no single instance have I found this 
aversion to continue. When utterly disheartened, I have 
encouraged the boy by that anecdote of Newton, where he 
attributes the difference between him and other men main- 
ly to his own patience; or of Mirabeau, when he ordered 
his servant, who had stated something to be impossible, 
never to use that stupid word again. Thus cheered, he 
has returned to his task with a smile, which perhaps had 
something of doubt in it, but which nevertheless evinced 
a resolution to try again. I have seen the boy's eye 
brighten, and at length, with a pleasure of which the 
ecstacy of Archimedes was but a simple expansion, 
heard him exclaim, ' I have it, sir ! ' The consciousness 
of self -power thus awakened was of immense value; and 
animated by it, the progress of the class w^is truly aston- 
ishing. It was often my custom to give the boys their 
choice of pursuing their propositions in the book, or of 
trying their strength at others not found there. Never 
in a single instance have I known the book to be chosen. 
I was ever ready to assist when I deemed help needful, 
but my offers of assistance Avere habitually declined. 
The boys had tasted the sweets of intellectual conquest, 
and demanded victories of their own. I have seen their 
diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into the beams of 
the play-ground, and numberless other illustrations of 
the living interest they took in the subject .... The 
experiment was successful, and some of the most delight- 
ful hours of my existence have been spent in marking 
the vigorous and cheerful expansion of mental power 



104 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

when appealed to in the manner I have described." 
This is indeed a striking illustration of the true art of 
teaching, as consisting in the mental and moral direc- 
tion of the pupil's self-education; and the result every 
one can see, was the acquisition of something far more 
valuable than the knowledge of geometry. They gained, 
as an acquisition for life, a knowledge of themselves, a 
conciousness of both mental and moral power, which all 
the didactic teaching in the world could never have 
given them. All teachers should learn, and practise, 
the lesson conveyed by such an example of teaching as 
this. 

ISow taking the former instance as a typical specimen 
of the art of teaching, let us consider what is involved 
in it, and gather from it a confirmation of the views 
already given of the relation of the educator to his 
pupils, of the Science of PJducation to the Art. 

We see (1) that the pupil, teaching himself under the 
direction of the educator, begins with tangible and con- 
crete facts which he can comprehend, not with abstract 
principles which he cannot. He sees, handles, experi- 
ments upon the machine; observes what it is, what it 
does, draws his own conclusions; and thus healthfully 
exercise his senses, his powers of observation, his judg- 
ment; and prepares himself for understanding, at the 
proper time, general propositions founded on the knowl- 
edge that he has acquired. 

(2.) That, in teaching himself — in gaining his knowl- 
edge — he employs a method, the analytical, which lies 
in his own power, not the synthetical, which would re- 
quire the teacher's explanations; yet that he employs 
also the synthetical, when called on to exercise his 



POINTS TO BE CONSIDERED. 105 

combining and constructive faculty. He employs the 
analytical method in resolving the machine into its parts, 
its actions into their several constituents and moans; 
and the synthetical when be uses the knowledge thus 
gained for interpreting other pan'ts and other actions of 
the machine, and when he applies tbis knowledge to the 
invention of otber contrivances not actually contem- 
plated by the macbine-maker. 

(3.) That, in being made a discoverer and explorer on 
his own account, and not merely a passive recipient of 
the results of other people's discoveries, he not only 
gains mental power, but finds a pleasure in the discov- 
eries made by himself, which he could not find in those 
made by others. 

(4.) That in teaching himself, instead of being taught 
by the explanations of the teacher, he proceeds, and can 
only proceed, in exact proportion to his strength, gain- 
ing increased knowledge just at the time that he wants 
it — at the very moment when the increment will natur- 
ally become, to use a happy expression of Mr. Fitch, 
"incorporated with the organic life of his mind." It is 
needless to add, that he advances in this self-teaching, 
from the known to the unknown, for the process he em- 
ploys leaves no other course open to him. 

(5.) That, in teaching himself in this way, he learns 
to reason both on the relation of facts and the relation 
of ideas to each other: and that thus the "logic of 
experiment" leads him to the logic of thought. 

(6.) That, in this process of self-teaching, he acquires 
a fund of knowledge and of mental conceptions, which, 
by the natural association of ideas, forms the ground- 
work or nucleus to which other knowledge and other 



106 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

conceptions of the same kind will subsequently attach 
themselves; the machine which he knows, becoming a 
sort of alphabet of mechanics, by means of which he will 
be able to read and understand, in some degree, other 
machines. 

(7.) That the knowledge, thus gained by the action 
of his own mind, will be clear and accurate, as far as it 
goes, because it has been gained by his own powers. 
He may, indeed, have to modify his first notions, to 
acknowledge to himself that his observations were im- 
perfect, his conclusions hasty; but if not interfered with 
by unseasonable meddling from without, liis mind will 
correct its own abberrations, and be much the stronger 
for being required to do this itself. (You will remember 
Professor Tyndall's experience in teaching geometry.) 

(8.) That by teaching himself in this special case, he 
is on the way to acquire the power of teaching himself 
generally, to gain the habit of mental self direction, of 
self power, the very end and consummation of the edu- 
cator's art. 

In order to illustrate my point still more clearly, by 
force of contrast, I will give a sketch of another mode 
of teaching, very commonly known in schools, taking 
the same subject for the lesson as before. 

The teacher, whose operations we are now to observe, 
has a notion — a very common one — that as rules and 
general principles are compendious expressions repre- 
senting many facts, he can economize time and labor 
by coii.mencing with them. They .are so pregnant and 
comprehensive, he thinks, that if (your 2/" is a great 
peace-maker) he can but get his pupils to digest them, 
they will have gained much knowledge in a short time. 



BAD TEACHING ILLUSTRATED. 107 

This remarkable educational fallacy I have already 
referred to. Our teacher, however (not knowing the 
science of education, which refutes it), assumes its 
truth, takes up a book (a great mistake to begin with, to 
teach science from a book I), and in order to be quite in 
form (scientific form being the very opposite to this), 
reads out from it a definition of a machine: "A machine 
is an artificial work which serves to apply or regulate 
moving power; " or another to the same effect: "A ma- 
chine is an instrument formed by two or three of the 
mechanical powers, in order to augment or regulate 
force or motion." Now the men who wrote these defi- 
nitions were scientific men, already acquainted with the 
whole subject, and they summed up in these few words 
the net result of their observation of a great number of 
machines, so as logically to differentiate a machine from 
everything else. Their definitions were intended for the 
mature minds of students of science, and were therefore 
framed in a scientific manner. This logical arrangement 
is, however, the very opposite to that in which the sci- 
ence was historically developed, and which is the only 
one possible for the child who teaches himself. Our 
teacher, uninformed in the science of education which 
disposes of this and so many other questions belonging 
to the art, implicitly follows the good old way, and 
reads out, as I have said, the definition of a machine. 
The pupils, who are quite disposed to learn whatever 
really interests them, listen attentively, but not knowing 
anything about "moving power" or "force" nor what 
is meant by augmenting or regulating it, nor what 
" mechanical powers " are, at once perceive that this is 
a matter which does not concern them, and very sensibly 



108 PKACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

turn their minds in another direction. The vivid curi- 
osity and sympathy manifested in the other instance are 
wanting here. These pupils have no curiosity about 
the entirely unknown, and no sympathy with the teach- 
er who presents them with, the entirely unintelligible. 
The teacher perceives this, and endeavors to " clear the 
ground," evidently filled with stumbling-blocks and 
brambles, by an explanation: — "A machine," he says, 
(no machine being in sight) " is an artificial work, that 
is, a work made by art." (Boy, really anxious to learn 
something if he can, thinks, " What is art ? " He has 
heard, perhaps, of the art of painting, but what has a 
machine to do with painting?) The teacher proceeds: 
"A machine you see [the children see nothing] is an 
artificial work (that is, a work made by art), which 
serves to apply, augment (that is add to) and regulate 
(that is, direct) moving force or power; you know what 
that is of course — [The teacher instinctively avoids ex- 
plaining the mechanical force of a mere idea] — by com- 
bining or putting together two or more of the mechani- 
cal powers — that is, levers, pulleys, etc. — I need not 
explain these common words, everybody knows what 
they mean; — so now you see what a machine is. What 
is a machine ?" A. B. answers, " A machine is a mov- 
ing power." C. ,D., "It is something which adds force." 
"Adds force to what?" C. D. still, "to pulleys and 
levers." "How stupid you all are !" groans out the 
teacher, " there is no teaching you anything ! " At that 
moment, E. F., a practical boy, gets a glimmering of 
the truth, and says, "A steam engine is a machine.'' 
This is an effort of the boy to dash through the entan- 
glement of the words, and make his way up to the facts. 



BAD TEACHING ILLUSTRATED. 109 

The teacher, however, at once throws him back again 
into the meshes, by saying, " Well then, apply the defi- 
nition." Boy replies, " I don't understand the defini- 
tion." " Not understand the definition ! Why, I have 
explained every word of it ; " and so on. He reads the 
definition again, questions his pupils again upon it with 
the same result. He perceives that he has failed alto- 
gether in his object. All his explanations, which have 
been nothing more tlian explanations of words^ not of 
things, (a very common error in teaching) have failed to 
" clear the ground," which remains as full of stumbling- 
blocks and brambles as ever. A bright thought strikes 
him. He introduces a picture of a machine — say of the 
pile-driving machine — (not the machine itself), and a 
considerable enlightenment of the darkness at once 
takes place. There is now something visible, if not tan- 
gible. Curiosity and sympathy are awakened, and some 
of the ends of teaching are secured, and more would be 
secured but that the teacher still confines himself to 
reading from his book a description of the machine, 
though he occasionally interpolates explanations of the 
technical words that occur. But the picture is, after 
all, a dead thing; all its parts are in repose or equilib- 
rium; and the pupils, after giving their best attention 
to it, see in it scarcely any illustration of the terms of the 
definition through which they have labored so painfully. 
The pictured machine represents "moving power" by 
not moving at all, and " force " by doing nothing, while 
it leaves the "mechanical powers" an entirely unsolved 
mystery. They depart from the lesson with a number 
of confused notions of " moving power," " augmenta- 
tion of force," " mechanical powers," " pile-driving," 



110 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

"monkeys," and " clutches," while the mental discipline 
they have acquired is an absolute nullity. Their minds 
have indeed never once been brought into direct vital 
contact with the matter they were to learn. The thing 
itself, the machine, has been withheld from them; noth- 
ing but a representation, possibly a mis-representation, 
of it, has been seen, at a distance, in a state of dead 
repose. Instead, therefore, of observing themselves its 
action, they have been told wiiat somebody else has ob- 
served; instead of trying experiments upon it with their 
own hands, they have been treated with a description of 
somebody else's experiments; instead of being required 
to form a judgment of their own on the relation of cause 
and effect, as seen in the action and reaction of forces, 
they have been made acquainted witl^ the judgments of 
others, and the general result of the whole lesson prob- 
ably is, that while they have been, no doubt, deeply 
impressed with the learning and science of their teacher 
(and especially of his book), they have left the class still 
more deeply impressed with the determination that, if 
this is science, they will have as little as possible to do 
with it.* 

Now the teacher, in this case, may be credited with 
earnestness, zeal, industry, knowledge of his subject 
(though he had better have thrown away his book), 
with all the knowledge in short that goes to the making 
of a teacher, except (but the exception is rather import- 
ant) a knowledge of the art of teaching. 

Theae specimens of the art of teaching strikingly illus- 

* " There is no use, educationally, in telling you simply the results to 
which I have come. But the true method of education is to show you a 
road, by pursuing which you cannot help arriving at these results for 
yourselves."—" University Extension,*' ubi supra. 



SELF- ACTIVITY TO BE STIMULATED. Ill 

trate the principles before insisted on. It has been 
maintained that there is an inherent capacity in the 
child who has taught himself to speak and walk, to teach 
himself other things, provided that they are things of 
the same kind as he has learnt already. Now all chil- 
dren, not being born idiots, are capable of taking part 
in such a lesson as I have described — can employ their 
senses upon the concrete matter of the machine, observe 
its phenomena, make experiments themselves with it, 
and gain more or less knowledge by this active employ- 
ment of their minds upon it. And the same would be 
true of lessons on other concrete matter — on flowers, 
stones, animals, etc. In fact, these children have been 
taught all their lives by contact with concrete matter in 
some shape or other, and the teacher who understands 
his science will see that there is no other possible path 
to the abstract. It is obvious, then, that rudimentary 
lessons on the properties of matter, in continuation of 
those already received from natural circumstances, should 
constitute the earliest instruction of a child; and our 
typical lesson conclusively shows that such instruction is 
attainable, and most valuable, not only for its own sake, 
but with a view to mental development. 

It is also shown that when the subject of instruction 
is judiciously chosen, the pupil needs no verbal explana- 
tions. The lesson in question is a specimen of teaching 
in which, in accordance with the theory with which we 
set out, all the work on which the mental acquisition 
depends is absolutely and solely done hy the pupil, while the 
teacher's actmi and influence, which originate and maintain 
the pupil's work, is confined to guidance and superintendence. 

3Iany arguments might be adduced to shoiv that the 



112 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. 

principle, that the main business of the teacher is to get the 
pupil to teach himself, lies at the basis of the entire Art of 
Instruction. The teacher who, by whatever means, 
secures this object, is an efficient artist; he who fails in 
this point, fails altogether; and the various grades of 
efficiency are defined by the degree of approximation to 
this standard.* 

The principle itself is recognized unconsciously in the 
practice of all the best teachers. Such teachers, while 
earnestly intent on the process by which their pupils are 
instructing themselves, generally say little during the 
lesson, and that little is usually confined to direction. 
Arnold scarcely ever gave an explanation; and if he did, 
it was given as a sort of reward for some special effort of 
his pupils; and his son, Mr. Matthew Arnold, tells us that 
such is the practice of the most eminent teachers of 
Germany. 

If further authority for the theoretical argument be 
needed, it may be found in the words of Rousseau, wh®, 
recommending "self-teaching" (his own word), says, — 

*"AlltheDest cultivation of a child's inind," says Dr, Temple, "is 
obtained by the child's own exertions, and the master's success may be 
measured by the degree in which he can bring his scholars to make such 
exertions absolutely without aid." 

...."That divine and beautiful thing called teaching; that excellent 
power whereby we are enabled to help people to think for themselves; 
encouraging them to endeavors, by dexterously guiding those endeavors 
to success; turning them from their error just when, and no sooner than 
their error has thrown a luminousness upon that which caused it; care- 
fully leading them into typical difficulties, of which the very path we lead 
them by shall itself suggest the solution; sometimes gently leading them; 
sometimes leaving theni to the resource of their own unaided endeavors, 
till, little by little, we have conducted them through a process in which it 
would be almost impossible for them to tell how much is their own dis- 
covery, how much is what they have been told."—" University Exten^ 
sion," ubi supra. 



ADVANTAGES OF SELF- ACTIVITY. 113 

" Obliged to learn by himself, the pupil makes use of his 
own reason, and not that of others. From the continual 
exercise of the pupil's own understanding will result a 
vigor of mind, like that which we give the body by labor 
and fatigue. Another advantage is, that we advance 
only in proportion to our strength. The mind, like the 
body, carries only that which it can carry. But when 
the understanding appropriates things before depositing 
them in the memory, whatever it afterwards draws from 
thence is properly its own." Again: "Another advan- 
tage, also resulting from this method, is, that we do not 
accustom ourselves to a servile submission to the author- 
ity of others; but, by exercising our reason, grow every 
day more ingenious in the discovery of the relations of 
things, in connecting our ideas, and in the contrivance 
of machines; whereas, by adopting those which are put 
into our hands, our invention grows dull and indifferent, 
as the man who never dresses himself, but is served in 
everything by his servants, and drawn about everywhere 
by his horses, loses by degrees the activity and use of 
his limbs." ("Essays on Educational Reformers," p. 
135.) 



£ 



THE PRACTICE OF EDOCATION-ANALYSIS. 



I. Practice of Education here limited to Instruction . .86 

II. Learning is Self Teaching. 

1. Two parties conjointly engaged 87 

2 . The teacher is only a guide 88, 99 

III. Nature's Art of Education 89 

1. She gives no explanations 90, 91 

2. She puts facts before generalization ...89, 92, 104 

IV. But Nature is not to he followed implicitly. 

1. Her teaching is desultory 93 

2. It is often inaccurate 93 

3. It often appears overdone -93 

4. It does not aim at improvement 93 

5. It does not accustom to generalization 94 

6. Its discipline is relentless -94 

V. An Illustration of Good Teaching 95 

1. The object placed before the class 96, 104 

2. The pupils experiment with it - 96, 100 

(a) Notions of a force, ft machinery, y measure- 
ment, 5 momentum, £ friction, etc .-.97 

3. Their inventive talent is awakened 98 

4. The machine is its own explanation 99 

5. The pupils enjoy learning 100 

6. The best teacher grows most useless 101 

7. The pupils become discoverers _ ...101, 105 

(a) The faculty of invention stimulated 102 

(6) Prof. Tyndall's experience .103 

VI. Deductions from this Illustration of Self- Teaching. 

1. The pupil begins with facts 104 

2. He uses both analysis and synthesis 105 

3. He enjoys the pleasure of discovery - -105 

4. He is started in self-teaching. ..^. ^ — -. 1^5 

114 



ANALYSIS. 116 

« 

5. He learns to generalize 106 

6. His lesson becomes a clue to others.. 106 

7. His knowledge is accurate as far as it goes 106 

8. He gains habits of mental self-direction 106 

VII. An Illustration of Bad Teaching. 

1. The pupil begins with a generalization ...107 

(a) Fallacy that compact statement is most useful.. .107 

(b) Mistake of taking science from a book .107 

(c) Misunderstanding of what is scientific form 107 

a Logic of statement vs. logic of development 107 

{d) Language unintelligible to the pupils 108 

(e) No curiosity, no sympathy 108 

(/ ) The explanation of words, not things 109 

2. A picture introduced instead of the object 109 

(a) After all, only a dead thing 110 

(6) Confused notions, and no mental discipline 110 

(c) Result, distaste for science 110 

VIII. The Business of the Teacher to get the Pupil to teach 
Himself. 

1. The child has inherent capacity Ill 

{a) Rudimentary lessons on matter appropriate Ill 

(6) He needs no explanations 112 

2. This principle is recognized by the best teachers 113 

3. Advantages to the pupil 113 



EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 



There is a just distinction between a Method and 
an Art, and between these and a Science. A Method is 
a special mode of administering an Art, and an Art is 
a practical display of Science. In education, every 
teacher must have some mo<le of exhibiting the notions 
he has of his art, and this mode is his Method. He is 
practising his Art whenever he calls forth the active 
powers of his pupils, let the subject on which he exer- 
cises them be what it may. A simple machine, a flower, 
a bit of chalk, or a portion of language, may be the means 
for displaying his art. But if he contents himself with 
leading his pupils in a desultory way, from one point of 
knowledge to another, from one temporary mental excite- 
ment to another, he risks their loss both of instruction 
and education — the one consisting in the orderly acquisi- 
tion of knowledge ; the other in the attainment, through 
instruction, of good mental habits. The teacher, then, 
must define his object by a special mode or method for 
securing it. This method will be the exponent of his 
notions of the Art of Education, and will be good or 
bad just as these notions are sound or unsound ; and 
this, again, will depend on his knowledge of the Science 
of Education — a science, as was before shown, ultimately 
based on that of Human Nature. 

The principle being once admitted, that the instruc- 
tion aimed at can only be gained by the thinking of the 
116 



THE CENTRIPETAL FORCE. 117 

pupil, it follows that the direct object of the teacher is 
to get the learner to think. The mode of procedure 
which secures this object in the best way is the best 
method of teaching. There may, therefore, be many good 
methods of teaching ; but no method is good which does 
not recognize and appreciate the pupil's natural method 
uf learning. This principle, I repeat, serves as the test 
of the method emj^loyed by the teacher ; and it is in 
this sense that the pupil's subjective process of learning 
suggests the objective counterpart method of teaching. 
If the teacher succeeds in getting his pupils to do all 
the thinking by which the instruction is gained, the 
method he employs must be a good one ; for, to repeat 
Dr, Temple's words already quoted, "the master's suc- 
cess may be measured by the degree in which he can 
bring his pupils to make such exertions [t. e., the exer- 
tions of their own mindsj absolutely without aid." In 
the system of agencies, then, by which the work of in- 
struction is to be accomplished, the principle, that the 
pupil's own mental effort alone secures the intended re- 
sult, is the centripetal force which is ever tending to 
harmonize the details of the process. Continually act- 
ing in opposition to this are the centrifugal forces — 
volatility, indolence, indifference, etc., which tend to 
disturb its normal operation. The teacher who com- 
mands both these forces, directing the centripetal and 
controlling the centrifugal, is a master of educational 
method, and preserves unity of action amidst the endless 
diversities of his practice. 

It follows from the foregoing observations, that as the 
characteristics of a good method of teaching are sug- 
gested and dictated by the characteristics of a good 



118 EDUCATION A.L METHODS. 

method ol learning, it is important to know what is in- 
volved in a good method of learning, in the last Lect- 
ure, 1 endeavored to show, by an illustrative lesson, 
what the pupil, under the direction of the teacher, does 
when engaged in teacliing himself a machine. The les- 
son was, however, presented as typical, and may be ap- 
plied, mutatis mutandis, to other subjects of instruction. 
It showed that a child can learn the elements of physi- 
cal science by the exercise of his own mind, " absolutely 
without the aid" of the teacher, except that aid which 
consists in maintaining the mental force by which the 
pupil acquires his knowledge. The teacher throughout 
recognized the native capacity of his pupils to learn, 
and his method consisted in stimulating that capacity to 
do its proper work. He gave no explanations, because 
the machine being its own interpreter, none were needed. 
He gave no definitions, because all definitions, given in 
anticipation of the facts on which they are founded, 
would have been unintelligible ; and he properly con- 
sidered that the true basis of all science is a knowledge 
of facts. He recognized, in short, throughout the en- 
tire lesson, the principle which I have so often insisted 
on, that his pupils were teaching themselves, and that 
he was the director of the process. 

In order to show what the method of the pupil was, 
is is necessary briefly to recapitulate the main points of 
the process. We notice, then — 

1. That he began his self-teaching with tangible and 
concrete matter, on which he could exercise his natural 
senses. 

2. That he employed analysis in gaining his knowl- 
edge, and synthesis in displaying and applying it. 



ADVANTAGES OF SELF- ACTIVITY. 119 

3. Til at he was an explorer, experimenter, and invent- 
or on his own account — a true, however feeble, disciple 
of the method of scientific investigation. 

4. That he proceeded in proportion to his strength, 
and consequently from the known to the unknown. 

5. That the ideas that he gained, being derived by 
himself from facts present to his senses, were clear and 
accurate as far as they went. 

6. That by teaching himself — relying on his own 
powers — in a special case, he was acquiring the power 
of teaching himself generally ; and was therefore on 
the way to gain the habit of independent mental self- 
direction — the real goal of all the teacher's efforts. 

7. That he dispensed with all explanations on the 
part of the teacher, though he was told the conven- 
tional and technical names for things which he already 
knew. 

These are not all, but they are the main characteris- 
tics of the pupil's method of learning elementary science, 
and indeed of learning everything — language, geometry, 
arithmetic, for instance — which admits of analysis of 
decomposition into parts, or which ultimately rests on 
concrete matter. In learning the imitative arts, the 
process will be somewhat varied, but the principles re- 
main essentially the same; for it is the same human 
mind engaged in teaching itself under the direction of 
the teacher. 

All the main characteristics, then, of a good method 
of teaching are involved in those of the pupil's natural 
method of learning: that is to say, the teacher must 
begin his instructions in science, language, etc., with 
concrete matter — with facts; must exercise his pupil's 



120 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

native powers of observation, judgment and reasoning; 
call on him to practise analysis and synthesis; make him 
explore, investigate, and discover for himself; and so on. 

Now it is obvious that, in order to maintain that ac- 
tion and influence by which the pupil's method is to end 
in complete and accurate knowledge, the teacher must 
be well furnished with that knowledge of mental and 
moral phenomena — of human nature, in short — which, 
as 1 showed in the first Lecture, should constitute his 
own equipment as an educator. He must know what 
the mind does while thinking, in order to get his pupils 
to think correctly. He must also know the normal ac- 
tion of moral forces before he can effectually control 
the moral forces of his pupils. In short, he must know 
what education is, and what it can be expected to ac- 
complish, before he can make it yield its best results. 
Without this knowledge, much of his labor maybe mis- 
applied, and even if not altogether wasted, will be much 
less productive than it would otherwise have been. 

In order to show that these notions respecting the 
characteristics of a good method are not merely theo- 
retical, I will now quote from an independent source — 
Mr. Marcel's valuable treatise on teaching* — what he 
considers to be the main features of such a method gen- 
erally. 

First, says Mr. Marcel, "^ good method favors self -teach- 
ing;'''' and on this point he makes the following apt re- 
marks: — 

* '* Languaj^e as a means of Mental Culture and International Com- 
munication; a Manual of the Teacher and the Learner of Languages.'" 
By C. Marcel, Knt. Leg. Hon; French Consul; 2 vols. 12mo; Chapman & 
Hall, 1853— a work of conspicuous excellence on the whole art of teach- 
ing, and well deserving to be reprinted. 



CLAUDE MARCEL. 121 

" One of the chief characteristics of a good nieJ;hod 
consists in enabling learners to dispense with the assist- 
ance of a teacher when they are capable of self-govern- 
ment. It should be so contrived as to excite and direct 
their spontaneous efforts, and lead them to the convic- 
tion that they have the power, if they have the will, to 
acquire whatever innn ])as acqnired. The prevailing 
notion that we must be taught everything [that is, by 
" the most stupid and most didactic method"] is a great 
evil. . . . The best informed teachers and the most 
elaborate methods of instruction can impart nothing to 
the passive and inert mind. If even a learner succeeded 
in retaining and applying the facts enumerated to him, 
the mental acquisition would then be vastly inferior to 
that which the investigation of a single fact, the analy- 
sis of a single combination [e. ff., the fact of the pile- 
driving machine, the combinations it afforded], by his 
unaided reason, would achieve." 

2. "^ ffood method is in accordance with nature^ 

lie adds, — "The natural process by which the vernac- 
ular idiom is acquired demonstrates what can be done 
by self -instruction, and presents the best model for our 
imitation in devising a method of learning languages." 
[This is only another way of stating the main proposi- 
tion, that the method of teaching is suggested by the 
natural method of learning]. 

3. "-4 ffood method comprises Analysis and Synthesis.''^ 
"Analysis, the method of Nature, presents a whole, 

subdivides it into its parts, and from particulars infers a 
general truth. By analysis we discover truths; by syn- 
thesis we transmit them to others. . . . Analysis, con- 
sistently with the generation of ideas and the process of 



122 lEDtJCATiONAL METlHObS. 

nature, makes the learner pass from the known to the 
unknown; it leads him by inductive reasoning to the 
object of study, and is both interesting and improving, 
as it keeps the mind actively engaged. Synthesis [Mr. 
Marcel here means the synthetic process of the teacher; 
there is a little confusion in his statement], on the con- 
trary, which imposes truths, and sets out with abstrac- 
tions, presents little interest, and few means of mental 
activity in the first stages of instruction. ... It is, 
however, necessary for completing the work commenced 
by analysis. In a rational method we should follow the 
natural course of mental investigatir)n; we should pro- 
ceed from facts to principles, and then from principles 
down to consequences. We should begin with analysis, 
and conclude with synthesis. ... In the study of the 
arts, decomposition and recom position, classification and 
generalization, are the groundwork of creation [t. e. of 
invention]." 

4. "^ good method is both practical and comparative.^'' 
Mr. Marcel, who has in view ei^pecially the learning of 
language, means that there should be both practice 
founded on imitation, and comparison, conducted by the 
exercise of the reasoning powers. "The former," he 
says, " exercises the powers of perception, imitation, and 
analogy; the latter those of rtflecLion, conception, com- 
parison and reasoning, the first leads to the art, the sec- 
ond to the science, of language. . . . The one teaches 
how to use a language, the other how to use the higher 
faculties of the mind. The combination of both would 
constitute the most efticient system." [It is needless to 
say that our model lesson on teaching elementary science 
presented both these characteristics]. 



CLAUDE MAECEL. 123 

5. '^A good method is an instrument of intellectual culture.'''' 

This is little more than a repetition of the previous 
statements. However, Mr. Marcel, in insisting that a 
good method should cultivate all the intellectual facul- 
ties, further remarks, that " through such a method the 
reasoning powers will be unfolded by comparing, gener- 
alizing, and classifying the facts of language, by infer- 
ring and applying the rules of grammar, as also by dis- 
criminating between different sentiments, different 
styles, different writers and different languages; whilst 
the active co-operation of attention and memory will be 
involved in the action of" all the other faculties." 

Such are, according to Mr. Marcel, who only repre- 
sents all the writers of any authority on the subject, the 
main criteria of a good method of teaching. It is ob- 
vious that, though he has chiefly in view the teaching of 
languages, they strikingly coincide with the deductions 
we gathered from observing the pupil's own method of 
learning elementary science. The conclusiou, then, ap- 
pears inevitable, that the characteristics of a good 
method must be the same, whatever the subject of in- 
struction, and that its goodness must be tested by its 
recognition or non-recognition of the natural laws of 
the process by which the human mind acquires knowl- 
edge for itself. 

Having thus indicated the main criteria of a good 
method of teaching, I shall emj^loy the remainder of our 
time in the exposition and criticism of the methods of a 
few of the masters of the art. 

I begin with Roger Ascham's method of teaching La- 
tin, a method characterized by Mr. J.B. Mayor, (himself 
a high authority on education), in his recently published 



124 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

valuable edition of "The Schoolmaster," as " the only 
sound method of acquiring a dead language." 

Ascham gave his pupils a little dose of grammar to 
begin with. He required them to learn by heart about 
a page of matter containing a synopsis of the eight parts 
of speech, and the three concords. This was the gram- 
matical equipment for tlieir work. He then took an 
easy epistle of Cicero. What he did with it may be best 
learned from his own words. " First," he said, " let the 
master teach the childe, cherefullie and plainlie, the 
cause and matter of the letter [that is, what it is about], 
then let him construe it into English e, so oft, as the 
childe may easilie carie awaie the understanding of it. 
Lastlie, parse it over perfitlie. [The teacher, it is seen, 
supplies conventional knowledge — the English words 
corresponding to the Latin — which the child could not 
possibly find out for himself, and strictly applies the 
modicum of grammar already learned.] This done thus, 
let the childe, by and by, both construe and parse it 
over againe; so that it may appeare, that the childe 
douteth in nothing that his master taught him before. 
[This is the reproductive part of the process, involving a 
partial, mechanical, synthesis]. After this, the childe 
must take a paper booke, and, sitting in some place 
where no man shall prompte him, by himself, let him 
translate into Englishe his former lesson. [This is a 
test of sound acquisition, and involves a more definite 
synthesis]. Then showing it [his translation] to his 
master, let the master take from his Latin booke, and 
pausing an houre, at the least, then let the childe trans- 
late his owne Englishe into Latin againe, in an other 
paper booke. [This is the critical test, the exact repro- 



ROGER ASCHAM. 125 

duction by memory, aided by judgment, of the knowl- 
edge gained by observation and comparison]. When 
the childe bringeth it turned into Latin [his re-transla- 
tion] the master must compare it with Tuilies booke 
[the Latin text of the epistle], and laiethem both togith- 
er; and where the childe dotli well, either in chosing or 
true placing of Tuilies words, let the master praise him 
and saie, Here ye do well. For I assure you there is no 
such whetstone to sharpen a good witte and encourage 
a will to learninge, as is praise." [This last part of the 
process is especially valuable, involving the correction 
of faults in the presence of the model, the pupil being 
really taught, not by the arbitrary dictum of the master, 
but by the superior authority of the master's master, the 
author himself]. 

In this way, supplying additional grammatical knowl- 
edge by the law of exigence, just when it is needed, the 
teacher finds in the text thus carefully "lessoned," 
studied, and known by the pupil, " the ground," as 
Ascham puts it, " of almost all the rewles that are so 
busilie (anxiously) taught by the master, and so hardlie 
learned by the scholer, in all common scholes; which 
after this sort the master shall teach without all error 
[because founded on facts present to view], and the 
scholer shall learne withoute great paine; the master 
being led by so sure a guide, and the scholer being 
brought into so plaine and easie a w^aie. And, there- 
fore," be proceeds, " we do not contemne rewles, but we 
gladlie teach rewles; and teach them more plainile, sen- 
sibile, and orderlie than they be commonlie taught in 
common scholes." 

We see in Ascham's method, that the concrete pre- 



126 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

ceded the abstract; the particulars, the generalization; 
the examples of language, the grammatical rules. He 
was thus carrying out the spirit of Dean Colet and Car- 
dinal Wolsey, who had insisted, to use the words of the 
former, that if a man desires " to attain to understand 
Latin books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let 
him above all busily (carefully) learn and read good 
Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note 
wisely how they wrote and spake, and study always to 
follow them, desiring none other rules but their exam- 
ples." After much more to the same effect, he ends his 
instructions to the masters of St. Paul's School, by urg- 
ing that " busy (careful) imitation with tongue and pen 
more availeth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, 
than all the traditions, rules, and precepts of masters." 
Cardinal Wolsey uses nearly the same words in his direc- 
tions to the masters of Ipswich School. 

Into the further details of Ascham's method, so 
quaintly described in the " Scholemaster," I cannot 
enter, except to say that after a long training in double- 
translations, with the constant application of grammar 
rules as they are wanted (" the grammar booke being 
ever in the scholer's hand, and also used by him, as a 
dictionarie, for everie present use,") the master trans- 
lates himself easy portions of Cicero into English, and 
then requires the pupil, who has not seen the original, to turn 
them into Latin. The pupil's work is then to be care- 
fully compared with, and corrected by, the original, 
" for of good heedtaking springeth chiefly knowledge." 
This exercise prepares the scholar for independent com- 
position in Latin. 

There is one feature especially in this method, as 



^OGER ASCHAAf. I2f 

described by Ascham, worthy of careful notice, and that 
is the close study of a small portion of literary matter, ending 
in a complete mastery of it. The various exercises of the 
method require the pupil, as Ascham shows, to sjo over 
this portion at least a dozen times; and he adds signifi- 
cantly, "always with pleasure; for pleasure allureth 
love, love hath lust to labor, labor always attaineth his 
purpose." By continually coming into direct contact 
with the phraseology of the text, the pupil masters the 
form; and through the form penetrates into the spirit of 
the author; or, as Ascham phrases it, " by marking 
dailie and following diligentlie the footsteps of the best 
authors, the pupil understands their invention of argu- 
ments, their arrangement of topics, and hereby," he 
adds, '* your scholar shall be brought not only to like 
[similar] eloquence, but also to all true understanding 
and rightful judgment for speaking and writing." It 
appears, then, that Ascham's pupil proceeds firmly on a 
broad basis of facts, which he has made his own by men- 
tal conquest, and that this has been possible because the 
field of conquest has been intentionally limited. It is 
obvious that no method of teaching which consists in 
bringing a bit of this thing (or author), a bit of that 
thing (or author), transiently before the pupil's mind, 
creating ideas, like dissolving views, each of which in its 
turn displaces its predecessor, which makes acquisitions 
only to abandon them before they are " incorporated 
with the organic life of the mind," can possibly be a 
good method. Hence the very general result of our 
systems of education, so called, is a farrago ol" facts par- 
tially hatched into principles, mingled in unseemly jum- 
ble with rules half understood, exceptions claiming equal 



128 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

rank with the rules, definitions dislocated from the ob- 
jects they define, and technicalities which clog rather 
than facilitate, as they should do, the operations of the 
mind. 

It would be easy to show that the valuable ends of 
instruction and education can only be gained by doing a 
little well ; that the ambition to grasp many things igno- 
bly ends in the loss of the large majority of them {qui 
trop emhrasse mal etreint); that apprehension is not com- 
prehension, and generally, that to the characteristics of 
a good method of teaching we must add this, that it 
aims at securing muUiim, but not multa. If the object of 
education is training to faculty, to mental self-direction, 
his principle must be constantly insisted on. I see, 
however, with the deepest regret, that our educational 
amateurs — men of the best intentions, but of no prac- 
tical experience — are continually violating it in their 
persistent attempts to extend the curriculum of element- 
ary instruction. A little bit of this knovvle(]ge, a little 
bit of that — some information on this point, and some 
on that — is so " useful." They forget that the most 
useful thing of all is the formation of good mental 
habits, and that these can only be formed by concentrat- 
ing the mind on a few subjects, and making them the 
basis of training. When this supremely useful object 
has been gained, the curriculum may be extended ad 
libitum; but not till then. What is really wanted in 
primary, and indeed all classes of schools, is not so 
much more subjects to teach, but the power of teaching 
the ordinary subjects well. Ascham's method, then, 
with some slight modifications, presents all the charac- 
teristic features of a good method of teaching, and is, 



KATICH, STUKM, COMENIUS. 129 

I need not point out, identical in principle with that 
already illustrated. It is natural, simple, effective, al- 
though so widely different, in most of its features, from 
the traditional methods of our grammar schools; which 
are, indeed, in most respects, suited, to the mental con- 
dition of the ambitious, active-minded, inventive few, 
but not at all to the ordinary mental condition of the 
many. We too often forget that the raison d'etre of the 
schoolmaster is the instruction, not of the minority who 
will and can teach themselves, but of the majority who 
can but will not. Our teaching force should regulate 
the movements rather of the ordinary planets than of 
the comets of the system. 

In the seventeenth century, a number of thoughtful 
men — Germans — unsatisfied with the methods of educa- 
tion then in vogue, began almost simultaneously to 
investigate the princi])les of education; and, as the 
result, arrived virtually at the conclusion on which I 
have so often insisted, that the teacher's function is 
really defined by that of the pupil, and that it is by 
understanding what he is, and what he does, that we 
learn how to treat him wisely and effectively. The 
eminent names of Ratich, Sturm, and especially Come- 
nius, are connected with this movement. I can do no 
more than refer those who are interested in the details 
to Von Ranmer's valuable " Geschichte der Padagogik," 
or to Mr. Quick's exposition of them in the " Essays on 
Educational Reformers." The results may be stated in 
Mr. Quick's words: 

" 1. They (the reformers in question) proceed from 
the concrete to the abstract, giving some knowledge of 
the thing itself before the rules which refer to it. 



130 fibUCAtiONAL METHODS. 

2. They employ the student in analyzing matter put 
before him, rather than in working synthetically accord- 
ing to precept. 3. They require the student to teach 
himself, under the super inte^idence of the master, rather than be 
taught by the master, and receive anything on the 
master's authority. 4. They rely on the interest ex- 
cited in the pupil by the acquisition of knowledge; and 
renounce coercion. 5. Only that which is understood 
may be committed to memory." 

The methods, then, of these reformers present the 
same characteristics which we have deductively gained 
by other means. 

In a lecture on Methods, it is impossible to omit the 
names of Locke and Rousseau. As, however, it is easy 
to read through the short and very interesting "Treatise 
of Education" and the capital digest of the *-Emile" 
in Mr. Quick's book, I may pass them over. 

We come next to Pestalozzi — a name of world-wide 
renown, of still increasing influence. He differed essen- 
tially from Comenius, whom he practically succeeded in 
the history of education, in being a comparatively un- 
educated man. When once reproached by his enemies 
(of whom, from various causes, he had many) with being 
unable to read, write, and cipher respectably, he frankly 
acknowledged that the charge was true. On another 
occasion he confessed to an " unrivalled incapacity to 
govern " — a confession which discovered a most accur- 
ate self-knowledge on his part; and generally, his whole 
educational life bore witness to the deficiency of his 
mental equipment and training. He often bitterly de- 
plored, when he could not remedy, this ignorance and 
incapacity. His mind, however, was remarkably active 



PESTALOZZI. 131 

and enterprising, and his moral power truly immense. 
A thousand criticisms on his want of know^ledge, of 
judgment, of the power of government, of even common 
sense (as men usually estimate that quality), fall power- 
less as attacks on a man whose unfailing hope, love, and 
patience not only formed his inward support under trials 
and disappointments, but combined with that intense ne- 
cessity of action, which was the essence of his nature, 
in stamping his moral influence on all around him. Vir- 
tue, with him, was not a mere word; it was an energetic, 
ever-acting force.* To instruct and humanize the poor 
wretched children who were generally his pupils, — to 
relieve their physical wants and sufferings, — to sympa- 
thize with them under their difficulties, — was to him not 
only a duty but a delight. To accomplish these objects, 
he worked like a horse (only harder), fagging and slav- 
ing sometimes from three in the morning till eleven at 
night, dressed himself like a mechanic, almost starved 
himself, became, as he tells us, " the children's teacher, 
trainer, paymaster, man-servant, and almost house- 
maid;" and all this to gain the means for instructing, 
boarding, sometimes even clothing, children who not 
unfrequently rewarded his labors with ingratitude and 
scorn. Pestalozzi was indeed the Howard of school- 
masters. 

It was his unbounded philanthropy that first led him 
to become a schoolmaster, — his intense love and pity 



♦ Like most enthusiasts, liowever, he exercised it very irregularly. On 
one occasion, we are told, when reduced to the utmost extremity for want 
of money, he borrowed 400 francs from a friend. Going home, he met a 
peasant wringing his hands in despair for the loss of his cow. Without 
a moment's hesitation, Pestalozzi put the purse with all its contents into 
the man's hands and ran off, as quick as he could, to escape his thanks. 



132 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

that supplied both iriotive and means. He saw around 
him children perishing, as he conceived, for lack of 
knowledge; and though possessed of little himself, 
though mentally untrained, though ignorant of the ex- 
perience of other teachers, he resolved, with such appli- 
ances as he had, to commence the work. The one rul- 
ing thought in his mind was, " Here are poor ignorant 
children. From my heart I pity them. I feel that I can 
do them some good. Let me try." 

It is not to be wondered at that his trials often proved 
"trials" indeed, and ended in utter disappointment: for 
although his educational instincts furnished him with 
excellent notions and theories about teaching, the actual 
results were often unsatisfactory. In this intense eager- 
ness to press forward, he never stopped to examine re- 
sults, nor to co-ordinate means with ends. Provided 
that he could excite, as he generally did, a vivid interest 
in the actual lesson, he was contented with that excite- 
ment as the end of his teaching. Thus, while he, to 
some extent, developed the mental powers, he did not 
even conceive of the higher end of training them to in- 
dependent action. 

In order tosliow what Pestalozzi's method of teaching 
really was^ I shall quote some passages from an inter- 
esting narrative written by Ramsauer, who was first a 
pupil and then a teacher in one of Pestalozzi's schools.* 

Referring to his experience as a pupil, he says, " I got 
about as much regular schooling as the other scholars — 
namely, none at all; but his (Pestalozzi's) sacred zeal, 

* Those quotations are taken from a translation by Mr. Tilleard of Von 
Raumer' s account of Pestalozzi's Life and System, given in the "Ge- 
schichte der Padagogik." 



PESTALOZZI. 133 

bis devoted love, which caused him to be entirely un- 
mindful of himself, his serious and depressed state of 
mind, which struck even the children, made the deepest 
impression on me, and knit my childlike and grateful 
heart to his forever." 

Pestalozzi had a notion " that all the instruction of 
the school should start from form, number, and lan- 
guage; so that the entire curriculum consisted of drawing, 
ciphering, and exercises in language." "We neither 
read nor wrote," says Ramsauer, " nor were we required 
to commit to memory, anything secular or sacred." 
"For the drawing, we had neither copies to draw from 
nor directions what to draw, but only crayons and 
boards; and we were told to draw 'what we liked.' . . 
But we did not know what to draw, and so it happened 
that some drew men and women, some houses, etc. . , 
Pestalozzi never looked to see what we had drawn, or 
rather scribbled; but the clothes of all the scholars, es- 
pecially the sleeves and elbows, gave unmistakable evi- 
dence that they had been making due use of their cray- 
ons." [This is a remarkable specimen of children being 
left to teach themselves, without the careful superintendence 
of the teacher^ and certainly does not recommend the 
practice]. 

" For the ciphering," Ramsauer says, " we had be- 
tween every two scholars a small table pasted on mill- 
board, on which, in quadrangular fields, were marked 
dots which we had to count, to add together, to subtract, 
to multiply and divide, by one another." [Here there 
is obviously some superintendence; the character of it, 
however, is seen in what follows]. " But as Pestalozzi 
only allowed the scholars to go over and repeat the ex- 



134 EDUCA.TIONAL METHODS. 

ercises in their turns, and never questioned them nor set 
them tasks, these exercises, which were otherwise very- 
good, remained without any great utility. He had not 
sufficient patience to allow things to be gone over again, 
or to put questions; and in his enormous zeal for the in- 
struction of the whole school, he seemed not to concern 
himself in the slightest degree for the individual 
scholar." [These are Ramsauer's words, and they give 
a curious idea of a superintendence which involved 
neither knowledge of the nature of the machine, nor a 
true conception of the end towards which it was work- 
ing, nor any notion of the corrections necessary to con- 
trol its abberrations and apply its action to special cases. 
Yet, as making concrete matter the basis of the abstrac- 
tions of number, it was good; and good, too, in employ- 
ing the pupiPs own observation, and his analytical and 
synthetical faculties. Hence we find that Pestalozzi was 
more successful in teaching arithmetic than anything 
else]. 

Ramsauer proceeds, — " The best things we had with 
him were the exercises on language, at least those which 
he gave us on the paper-hangings of the school-room, 
and which were real exercises on observation." " These 
hangings," he goes on to say, *' were very old and a good 
deal torn; and before these we had frequently to stand 
for two or three hours together; and say what we ob- 
served in respect to the form, number, position, and 
color of the figures painted on them, and the holes torn 
in them, and to express what we observed in sentences 
gradually increasing in length. On such occasions he 
would say, ' Boys, what do you see ?' (He never named 
the girls). Ans. — A hole in the wainscot (^meaning the 



PESTALOZZI. 135 

hangings). P. — Very good. Kow repeat after me : I 
see a hole in the wainscot. I see a long hole in the 
wainscot, Throngh the hole I see the wall. Through 
the long narrow" hole I see the wall. P. — Repeat after 
me: I see figures on the paper-hangings. 1 see black 
figures on the paper-hangings. I see round black figures 
on the paper-hangings. I see a square yellow figure on 
the paper hangings. Beside the square yellow figure I 
see black round figures, etc. 

" Of less utility were those exercises in language 
which he took from natural history, and in which we had 
to repeat after him, and at the same time to draw, as I 
have already mentioned. He would say: — Amphibious 
animals—crawling amphibious animals, creeping amphib- 
ious animals. Monkeys — long-tailed monkeys, short- 
tailed monkeys, — and so on." 

Kamsauer adds, — " We did not understand a word of 
this; for not a word was explained; and it was all spoken 
in such a sing-song tone, and so rapidly and indistinctly, 
that it would have been a wonder if any one had under- 
stood anything of it, and had learned anything from it. 
Besides, Pestalozzi cried out so dreadfully loud and so 
continuously that he could not hear us repeat after him, 
the less so as he never waited for us when he had read 
out a sentence, but w^ent on without intermission, and 
read off a whole page at once. Our repetition consisted 
for the most part in saying the last word or syllable of 
each phrase; thus, 'Monkeys — monkeys,' or 'Keys — 
keys.' There was never any questioning or recapitu- 
lation." 

This long, but interesting account, from the pen of an 
attached pupil, fairly represents (as we learn from Von 



136 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

Raumer himself, who spent nearly nine months in the 
school) Pestalozzi's actual teaching, though not the ideal 
which, in describing results to strangers, he often, in his 
enthusiasm, substituted for it. 

In criticizing it, we observe, in the first place, that 
Pestalozzi's method excites mental action to some ex- 
tent, but secures the ends neither of instruction nor 
education. It scarcely at all recognizes the self-teaching 
of the child, but rather supersedes it by the mechanical 
repetition of the master's words. The observation of 
the child, called for a moment to the properties of ob- 
jects, is immediately checked by the resolution, on the 
part of the teacher, of the lesson on things into a lesson 
on words. The naming of qualities, not ascertained by 
investigation, but pointed out by the teacher, constitutes 
what Pestalozzi looked on in theory as a training of the 
powers of ohservation. Von Raumer, Professors Maiden 
and Mosely, and Herbert Spencer, all agree in their es- 
timate both of the value of Pestalozzi's theory respect- 
ing object teaching, and the comparative worthlessness 
of his practice. In fact, to hold up a piece of chalk be- 
fore a class (keeping it in your own hands all the while,) 
to call out " That is chalk! that is chalk! that is chalk!" 
or " Chalk is white," " Chalk is hard," etc , is in no prop- 
er sense teaching the properties of chalk, but only the 
names of its properties. Pestalozzi, however, never 
saw this, nor that his method generally had no tendency 
to train the mind. An additional proof of his blind- 
ness in this respect was that he drew up manuals of 
instruction for his teachers which involveii in their use 
a perfectly slavish routine. Thus we learn from his 
" Book for Mothers," that the teacher, in teaching a 



PESTALOZZI. 137 

child the parts of his own body (which he fancied was 
the subject to be first taught), is to go, word for word, 
through a quantity of such matter as this: — " The mid- 
dle bones of the index finger are placed outside, on the 
middle joints of the index finger, between the back and 
middle members of the index finger," etc. Then he 
compiled a spelling-book containing long lists of words, 
which were to be repeated to the infant in its cradle, be- 
fore it was able to pronounce even one of them, that 
they might be deeply impressed on its memory by fre- 
quent repetition. 

On the whole, then, from Pestalozzi's method pur et 
simple^ there is little to be gained. It was much im- 
proved subsequently by some of his teachers, Schmid, 
Niederer, etc., who saw in his theories applications 
which he failed to see himself. Had he been educated 
in education, — had he, moreover, profited by the experi- 
ence of others, — had he brought his practice into con- 
formity with his principles (crude enough though some 
of these were) — his career, instead of being a series of 
failures and disappointments, many of them due, how- 
ever, to his unrivalled "incapacity to govern," would 
have been one of triumphant success. 

As it is, we owe him much. His principles, and much 
of his practice, are an inheritance that the world will 
not willingly let die. Let us, however, leave the noble- 
minded, self-sacrificing Pestalozzi, with all his virtues 
and all his faults, and pass on to Jacotot. 

It should be stated in the outset, that Jacotot was 
rather an educator of the mind than of all the human 
forces. He does not appear to have been placed in cir- 
cumstances which required him to develop and train, by 



138 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

special treatment, the physical and moral powers; al- 
though the moral force of his own energetic character, 
as well as that of his system, could not but be, and was, 
vitally influential on the whole being of his pupils. It 
is, however, mainly as a teacher that I propose to con- 
sider him. 

But some here will enquire who was Jacotot; — a 
question I have no time to answer in detail. I can 
merely say that he was born at Dijon in 1770; was edu- 
cated at the college of that town; at nineteen years of 
age took the degree of Docteur-des-Lettres, and was 
appointed Professor of Humanities {i. ^., grammar, rhet- 
oric, and composition) in the same college; when the 
troubles of his country arose, became, at the age of 
twenty-two, a captain of artillery, and fought bravely 
at the sieges of Maestricht and Valenciennes; was after- 
wards made sub-director uf the Polytechnic School at 
Paris; then Professor of the Method of Sciences at 
Dijon; and later Professor of Pure and Transcendental 
Mathematics, Roman Law, Ancient and Oriental Lan- 
guages in different colleges and universities. Obligced, 
as a marked opponent of the Bourbons, to leave France 
on their restoration, he took refuge in Brussels, and was 
in 1818 appointed by the Belgian government Professor 
of the French Language and Literature in the Univer- 
sity of Louvain; there discovered the method of teach- 
ing which goes by his name; devoted the remainder of 
his life to propagating it; and died at Paris in 1840, 
being then seventy years of age. 

We are told that, as a schoolboy, he displayed some 
remarkable characteristics. He was what teachers, and 
especially dull ones, consider a particularly "objectiona- 



JACOTOT. 139 

ble " child. He was one of those children who "wanted 
to know, you know," why this thing was so; why that 
other thing was not. He showed little deference, I am 
afraid, to the formal didactic prelections of his teachers. 
Not that he was idle; far from that. We are told that 
he delighted in the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge 
that could be gained by his own efforts, while he steadily 
resisted what was imposed on him by authority; admit- 
ting nothing which was prima facte contesUihle; rejecting 
whatever he could not see clearly; refusing to learn by 
heart grammars, or, indeed, any mere digests of conclu- 
sions made by others. At the same time he eagerly 
committed to memory passages of authors which pleased 
him, thus spontaneously preferring the society of the 
"masters of the grammarians" to that of the grammari- 
ans themselves. Even as a child, nearly everything he 
knew he had taught himself. He was, in short, ill 
adapted to be a pupil of any of those methods which, in 
Mrs. Pipchin's fashion, are intended to open the mind of 
a child like an oyster, instead of encouraging it to de- 
velop like a flower. As a Professor, his rooms were 
always crowded with eager pupils; and his inaugural 
address, at Louvain, was received, we are told by one 
who was present, with an enthusiasm like that which 
usually greeted Talma on the stage. 

His style of teaching, as a Professor, before the 
invention of his method, was striking and original. 
Instead of pouring forth a flood of information on the 
subject under attention from his own ample stores, ex- 
plaining everything, and thus too frequently superseding, 
in a great degree, the pupil's own investigation of it, 
Jacotot, after a simple statement of the object of 



140 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

the lesson, with its leading divisions, boldly started 
it as a quarry for the class to hunt down, and in- 
vited every member to take part in the chase. All 
were at liberty to raise questions, make objections, 
and suggest answers, to ask for facts as the basis of 
arguments, to repudiate mere didactic authority. Dur- 
ing the discussion, the teacher confined himself to ask- 
ing questions, to suggesting now and then afresh scent, 
to requiring clear statements and mutual courtesy; but 
of teaching, in the popular sense of the term, as consist- 
ing in the authoritative communication of knowledge, 
there was little or none. His object throughout was to 
excite, maintain, and direct the intellectual energies of 
his pupils — to train them to think. The lesson was 
concluded by his summing up the arguments that had 
been adduced, and stating clearly the results obtained.* 

*Mr. Wilson of Rugby, in his admirable paper in tlie '• Essays on a 
Liberal Education," thus describes, in almost identical terms, what he 
considers a proper method of teaching science:— 

"Tlieoryand experience alike convince me that the master who is 
teaching a class quite unfamiliar with scientific method, ought to make 
his class teach themselves, by thinking out the subject of the lecture with 
them, taking up their suggestions and illustrations, criticizing them, 
hunting them down, and proving a suggestion barren or an illustration 
inapt; starting them on a fresh scent when they are at fault, reminding 
them of some familiar fact they had overlooked, and so eliciting out of 
the chaos of vague notions that are afloat on the matter in hand— be it the 
laws of motion, the evaporation of water, or the origin of the drift— some- 
thing of order, and concatenation, and interest, before the key to the 
mystery is given, even if, after all, it has to be given. Training to think, 
not to be a mechanic or surveyor, must be first and foremost as his object. 
So valuable are the subjects intrinsically, and such excellent models do 
they provide, that the most stupid and didactic teaching will not be use- 
less, but it will not be the same source of power that ' the method of 
investigation' will be in the hands of a good master. Some few will 

work out a logic of proof, and a logic of discovery, when the facts and 
laws that are discovered and proved have had time to lie and crystallize 
in their minds. But imbued with scientific method they scarcely will be, 
unless it springs up spontaneously in them."— "On Teaching Natural 
Science in Schools." Essays on a Ldberal Education, pp. 281, 282. 



JACOTOT. 141 

We come now to the origin of Jacotot's method. In 
entering on his duties at Louvain, he found that he had 
to lecture to students, many of whom knew nothing of 
French. As he was himself ignorant of Flemish, the 
problem was how to teach them. He solved it in this 
way. He put into their hands copies of Telemaqne, 
which contained a Flemish translation, not literal, on the 
opposite page. After some exercises in pronunciation, 
he directed the students, through an interpreter, to com- 
mit to memory a few sentences of the French text, and 
gather their general meaning from the version in their 
own language. They were told, on the second day, and 
for several days, to add other porti(>ns in th6 same way, 
while carefully repeating from the beginning. This 
process, the laying in of materials, was repeated until a 
page or two of the book was thoroughly known — that 
is, known so that the pupils could go on with any sen- 
tence of the French text from memory, when the first 
word was given, or quote the whole sentence in which 
any given word occurred, while they had at the same 
time a general idea of the meaning. The teacher now 
began, through his interpreter, to put questions, in or- 
der to test their knowledge, not only of the sentences, 
as wholes, but also of the component phrases and words. 
As the process of learning by heart, and repeating from 
the beginning, went on, the questions became more close 
and specific, so as to induce in the pupils' minds analysis 
of the text into its minutest elements. When about 
half the first book of T6lemaque was thus intimately 
known, Jacotot told them to relate in their own French, 
good or bad, the substance, not the exact words, of this 
or that paragraph of the portion that they knew, or to 



142 EDtrCATlONAL METHODS. 

read a paragraph of another part of the book, and write 
down or say what it was about. He was surprised at 
their success in this synthetic use of their fund of ma- 
terials. He praised their achievements; saw, but took 
no notice of, the blunders; or if he did, it was simply to 
require the pupils to correct them themselves by refer- 
ence to the text (just as Ascham did). He reckoned on 
the power of the process itself, which involved an active 
exercise of the mind, to correct blunders which arose 
from inadvertence. In a very short time, these youths, 
learning, repeating, answering questions, were able to 
relate anything that they had first read over. Compo- 
sitions of different kinds, their text furnishing both sub- 
jects and language, were then given, and it was found 
that as they advanced they spontaneously recognized in 
their practice the rules of orthography and grammar 
(without having learned them), and at length wrote a 
language not their own better (as Jacotot somewhat 
extravagantly declared) — that is with a more complete 
command of the force, correctness, and even grace of 
style — than either himself or any of his colleagues. 

All were surprised at the result of his experiment, but 
Jacotot alone perceived the principles involved in it. 
He saw — 

(1.) That his pupils had learned French, not through 
his knowledge of it — the circumstances forbade that — 
but through the exercise of their own minds upon the 
matter of the text, which they had committed to mem- 
ory. If they had had any teacher, the book had been 
their teacher. It was from that source they had derived 
all their knowledge, and the exercise of their observing, 
remembering, comparing, generalizing, judging, and 



JACOTOT. 143 

analyzing powers upon it had suppled them with the 
materials they employed in their synthetic applications. 

(2.) He saw that, though he had been nominally their 
teacher, they had really taught themselves, — that the 
acquisitions they had made were their own acquisitions, 
the fruit of their own mental exertions, — that the 
method by which they had learned was really their 
method, not his. 

(3) He deduced from this observation, that the func- 
tion of the teacher is that of an external moral force, 
always in operation to excite, maintain and direct the 
mental action of the pupils, — to encourage and sympa- 
thize with his efforts, but never to supersede them. 

After awhile Jacotot presented, in the form given 
below, the result of his meditations on the principles 
involved in his experiments. This precept for the guid- 
ance of the teacher, is in fact — as will be at once seen — 
an epitome of the method of the learner, and indeed of 
all learners, whatever be their age, or the subject they 
may wish to learn so as really to know. 

This, then, is the fundamental precept of Jacotot's 
method: — Ilfaut apprendre quelque chose, et y rapporter tout 
le reste ; i. e.^ the pupil must learn something, and refer 
all the rest to it. When further explanation was de- 
manded, he would reply to this effect: — 

(1) Learn — i. e., learn so as to know thoroughly, per- 
fectly, immovably (imperturhahlement) , as well six months 
or twelve months hence as now — something, a portion 
of a book, for instance. (2) Repeat that something, the 
portion learned, incessantly — i. e.y every day or fre- 
quently (sans cesse), from the beginning, without any 
omission, so that no part of it be forgotten. (3) Reflect 



144 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

upon the matter thus acquired — analyze it, decompose 
it, re-combine the elements, make it a real mental pos- 
session in all its details, interpret the unknown by it. 
(4) Verify —test general remarks — i. e.^ grammatical and 
other rules — by comparing them with the facts — the 
phraseology and constructions which you already know^ 
In brief, learn, repeat^ reflect, verify, or if you like, learn, 
verify, repeat, reflect ; so that you learn first, the order of 
the other processes is unimportant. Know facts, then; 
bring all the powers of the mind to bear upon them; and 
repeat what you know, to prevent its being lost. This 
is the method of Jacotot, which may be otherwise repre- 
sented thus: — 

In all your learning, do homage to the authority of 
facts. 

(1) Apprenez. — Learn them accurately; grasp them 
firmly; apprehend, so as to know them. 

(2) Rapporte%. — Compare them with each other, inter- 
pret one by another, make the known explain the un- 
known, generalize them, classify them, analyze them 
into their elements, re-combine the elements, attach new 
knowledge to the pegs already fixed in your mind. 

(3) Repe.tez. — Don't let the facts slip away from you. 
To lose them, is to waste the labor you spent in acquiring 
them. Keep them, therefore, continually before you by 
repetition. 

(4) Veriflez. — Test general principles, said to be found- 
ed on them by confronting them with your facts. Bring 
your grammatical rules to the facts, and explain the 
facts by them. 

In all this process, the pupil is employing natural 
means for a natural end. He is doing what he did in 



JACOTOT. 145 

the case of the pile-driving machine — observing, com- 
paring, investigating, discovering, inventing: and if we 
apply the tests — Mr. Marcel's or any other — of a good 
method, we find, them all in this, which is the method of 
the pupil, teaching himself under the direction of the 
master. 

It is, in short, as said before, the method by which all 
learners — whether the little child in nature's infant 
school, or the adult man in the school of science — learn 
whatever they really know. In both cases, the essential 
basis of all mental progress is a knowledge of facts — a 
knowledge which, to be fruitful, must be gained at first 
hand, and. not on the report of others, must be strict and 
accurate, and must be firmly retained. These are the 
essential conditions for the subsequent operations by 
which knowledge is appropriated, assimilated, and 
incorporated with the organic life of the mind. On this 
point, however, I cannot further dwell. 

In order to make the principles of Jacotot's method 
clearer by a practical example, I will give, in some de- 
tail an account of his plan of teaching Reading. 

In this method, the sacred mysteries of h-a ha; h-e, he, 
in pronouncing which. Dr. Bell gravely tells us " the 
sound is an echo to the sense,''^ are together exploded; 
those columns too, all symmetrically arranged in the ves- 
tibule of the temple of knowledge to the dismay of the 
young pilgrim to its shrine, are entirely ignored. The 
sphynx of the alphabet never asks him what see-a-tee 
spells, nor devours him if he fails to give the impossible 
answer, cat. The child who has already learnt to speak 
by hearing and using whole words, not separate letters 
' — saying hahy^ not lee-a^ lee-wy — has whole words placed 



146 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

before him. These words are at first treated as pic- 
tures, which have names that he has to learn to associ- 
ate with the forms, in. the same way that he already 
calls a certain animal shape a cow^ and another a dog, and 
knows a certain face as mamma's, and another as papa's. 
Suppose we take a little story, which begins thus: — 

"Frank and Robert were two little boys about eight 
years old." 

There is, of course, a host of reasons to show the un- 
reasonableness of beginning to teach reading by whole 
words. We ought, we are told, to begin with the ele- 
ments, put them together for the child, arrange words 
in classes for him, keep all difficulties out of his way, 
proceed step by step from one combination to another, 
and so on. Reflecting, however, that Nature does not 
teach speaking nor give her object-lessons in this way, 
but first presents wholes, aggregates, compounds, which 
her pupil's analytic faculty resolves into their elements, 
the teacher sets aside all these speculative difficulties; 
and, believing in the native capacity of the child to ex- 
ercise on printed words the same powers which he has. 
already exercised on spoken words, forms the connection 
between the two by saying to the child, " Look at me '" 
(not at the book). He then very deliberately and dis- 
tinctly, but without grimacing, utters the sound "PVank" 
two or three times, and gets the child to do the same 
repeatedly, so as to secure from the first a clear and 
firm articulation. He then points to the printed word, 
repeats *' Frank " and requires the child, in view of it, 
to utter the same sound several times. The first word 
is learned and known. The teacher adds "and." The 
child reads "Frank and," The teacher adds "Robert," 



JACOTOT's method ILLXTSTRATED. l47 

The child reads "Frank and Robert." The teacher asks, 
"Which is * Robert'? 'and'? What is that word?" 
(pointing to it), "and that?" etc. The teacher says, 
"Show me ' and,' ' Robert,' 'Frank,' in the same page- 
in any page." 

The same process is repeated with the rest of the 
words of the sentence, and comes out thus: — 
Frank 
Frank and 
Frank and Robert 
Frank and Robert were, etc. ; 
the pupil is told each word once for all, and repeats 
from the beginning, that nothing may be forgotten. 
By thus (1) learning, (2) repeating, he exercises percep- 
tion and memory. 

Suppose that the next sentences are — 

"They were both very fond of playing with balls, 
tops, and marbles. 

" One day, as they were playing in the garden, it 
began to thunder very loud and to rain very hard. 

"So they ran under the apple tree." 

All the words of these sentences may be gradually 
learned, in the same way, in four, six, or ten lessons. 
There is no need for haste. The only thing needful is 
accurate knowledge— to have something (quelque chose) 
thoroughly, perfectly, immoveably known [imperturhahle- 
ment apprise). 

The child has up to this point imitated the sounds 
given him, has associated them with the signs, has exer- 
cised observation and memory; so that wherever he 
meets with these words in his book, the sign will suggest 



^- 



148 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

the sound — or given the sound, he will at once point out 
the sign. 

The teacher may now, if he thinks fit, begin to exer- 
cise the child's analytical and inductive faculties; not, 
however, necessarily on any symmetrical plan. He says, 
*' Look at me," and pronounces very distinctly f-rank^ 
repeating the process in view of the printed word. He 
does the same with f-ond and f-ad^ and asks the child, 
"Which letter is/?" (the articulation, not the name (?/). 
The child points it out, and in this way / (that is, the 
articulation, the power of it) is learned and known. 

The teacher covers over \\\q f\\\ frarik^ and asks what 
is left. The child replies " rank." The teacher pro- 
ceeds as before, uttering r-ank, and requiring the child 
to read for himself H-ohert, r-ain, r-an, and thus the artic- 
ulation of initial r is mastered. In the same way, the 
articulation / is gained from l-Utle and l-oud Nor do the 
mutes, as h and^, present any difficulty. The utterance 
of h-oysy b-oth, h-alls, h-egan suggests the necessary config- 
uration of the organs, and the function of these letters 
is apprtciated. 

The teacher may next, if he pleases, though it is not 
necessary to anticipate the natural results of the process, 
try the synthetic or combining powers of the child. He 
writes on a black-board, in priming letters, the words, 
fold, falls, fops, fain, frond, fray, raij, rap, lank, flank, last, 
loth, lops, let, laWy lap, hank, hat, hold, hay, blank, etc., and 
requires the child, without any help whatever, to read them 
himself. Most children will do this at once. If there 
is any difficulty, a simple reference, to the words Frank, 
little, boys, etc., without any explanation, will immediately 
dispel it. 



jacotot's method illustrated. 149 

It is not necessary, I repeat, for tlie teacher thus to 
anticipate the inevitable results of the process. The 
quickened mind of the pupil will, of its own accord, ana- 
lyze and combine, in its natural instinct to inter^^ret 
the unknown by the known. The only essential parts of 
the process are learning and repeating from the begin- 
ning; all the rest depends on these. And in guiding 
the mind of the pupil to the intellectual use of his 
materials, the teacher should be under no anxiety about 
the length of the process. He should often practise a 
masterly inactivity; should know how to gain time by 
losing it — to advance by standing still. If he have a 
genuine belief in the native capacity of his pupils' 
minds, he need have no fear as to the result. The pupil 
(l) learning, (2) rejieating, (3) reflecting — i. e., analyz- 
ing or de-composing, (4) re-combining, is all along em- 
ploying his active powers as an observer and investi- 
gator, and learns at length to read accurately and to 
articulate justly. The names of the letters may be given 
him when he has thus learned their powers. It is a con- 
venience, nothing more, to know them. The young 
carpenter saws and planes no better for knowing the 
names of his tools. 

Such, then, is Jacotot's method applied to the teaching 
of Reading. It ought, by theory, to accomplish this 
object, and it does. While philosophers are discussing 
the propriety of learning a subject without beginning 
secundum artem at what they call the beginning, the child, 
like the epic poet, dashes in medias res, and arrives at the 
end long before the discussion is over. A young inves- 
tigator of this school, initiated in the habit of actively 
employing his mind on the subject of study, laughs at 



150 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

the ingenious arrangements, however kindly meant, 
furnished by various spelling-book makers, to aid him 
in his career. He turns aside from ram^ rem, rim, rom, 
rum, — adge, edge, idge, odge, and udge, — indeed, from all the 
scientific permutations made for him on the assumption 
that he cannot make them himself. He is told that 
there is a go-cart provided to help him to walk, — that 
the food is ready minced for his eating: but he chooses 
to walk and comminute his food for himself. Why 
should we prevent him ? 

This method is essentially the same as Mr. Curwen's 
" Look and Say Method," and that of the little book en- 
titled "Reading without Spelling, or the Teacher's 
Delight;" the only difference being that the teacher 
here employs the process consciously as a means of 
developing and training the mental powers as well as of 
teaching to read, of education as well as of instruction. 

My pleasant task is now done. I have left much 
unsaid that I wish to say; and in criticising others, have, 
no doubt, exposed myself to criticism. As that is the 
common lot, I ought not to complain of it. I will, in 
conclusion, go over the main points which I have 
touched upon in the three lectures. 

In my first Lecture I endeavored to show that educa- 
tion is both a science and an art, and that the principles 
of the science account for, explain, and give laws to the 
processes of the art; that the educator's own education 
is incomplete without a knowledge of these principles, 
which are ultimately grounded on those of Physiology, 
Psychology, and Ethics; that this knowledge is useful, 
not only in its application to the normal phenomena 
occurring in practice^ but especially to the abnormal. 



REVIEW. 1 5 1 

which demand for their treatment all the resources of 
the science; that knowledge of this kind is comparatively 
rare among educators, and that its rarity is the main 
cause of the unsatisfactory condition of much of our 
education. 

In the second Lecture, assuming the education of the 
educator, and confining myself to teaching, or the art of 
intellectual education, I endeavored to show that the 
teacher ought, in the first place, to have a just concep- 
tion of his relation to his pupil; that this was gained by 
his seeing in the child one who had learned, or taught 
himself, all that he already knew, and inferring, there- 
fore, that it was his business to continue the process 
already begun; that it thus appeared that the child's 
process of learning was, to a great extent, a guide to the 
teacher's process of teaching, and that tlie joint opera- 
tion in which both were engaged resolved itself into the 
superintendence, or direction, by the teacher, of the 
pupil's method of self-instruction. 

In this Lecture, I have shown that a ^nethod of teaching 
any subject is a special mode of applying the art of 
teaching; that to bf^ a good method, it must have cer- 
tain characteristics, deduced from successful practice, 
and ultimately referable to the principles of the science 
of education, and I have described, and to some extent 
criticized, a few well-known methods. 

My simple aim, in these Lectures, has been to lead the 
educator to form a high idea of his work; to show that 
there are principles irnderlying his practice which it is 
important for him to know, and to induce him to study 
and apply them, not only for his own sake, but as a 
protest against the despotism of routine, which has so 



152 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

long hindered education from claiming its professional 
riohts in Eng^land. I trust I have not altoi>:ether failed 
to accomplish my purpose. 



EDUCWIOML METHODS-ANALYSIS, 



I. Science, Art, and Method distinguished 110 

II. Method the test of the Art 1 1 (; 

1. Best method that which teaches the pupil to think-_!17 
(a) Centrifugal and centripetal forces 117 

2. Characteristics of a good method. 118 

{a) Beginning with the tangible 118 

(6) Employing first analysis, then synthesis 118 

(c) Making the pupil an explorer ..119 

{d) Leading him from the known to the unknown ...l !9 

{e) Imparting only clear ideas 119 

(/) Leading to mental self-direction _ 119 

{g) Dispensing with explanations 119 

3. The teacher must know the mind he deals with 120 

III. MarceVs doctrine of Methods 120 

1. A good method favors self-teaching 121 

2. A good method is in accordance with nature 121 

3. A good method comprises analysis and synthesis 121 

4. A good method is both practical and comparative. .122 

5. A good method is an instrument of mental culture. .122 

IV. Roger Ascham's method of teacliing Latin. 

1. Its leading features: 

{a) Memorizing of material to work with... 124 

{b) Translation of Cicero's letters 124 

(c) Application of grammatical principles learned 124 

(rf) Review 124 

{e) Reproduction of the letter in English 124 

(/) Re-translation of the letter into Latin ..124 

{g) Comparison with the original . 125 

{h) Translation of English into Latin he has not seen. 127 

2. Characterized by a complete mastery of a little 127 

{a) Prime requisite to good method. 128 

153 



154 EDUCATIONAL METHODS. 

a The end should be to do a little well 128 

ft Not many things but much 128 

(b) This principle forgotten in some modern systems. .128 

(c) The school not for the few, but for the many 129 

V. Princij)les of the German Educators of the nth Century. -12d 

1. Proceed from the concrete to the abstract. 130 

2. Analysis precedes synthesis 130 

8. The pupil teaches himself, uncle?' direction .130 

4. The interested pupil needs no coercion 130 

5. Only what is understood should be memorized 130 

VI. Pestalozzi, 

1. His character.. 130 

(rt) A man uneducated and undisciplined 131 

ip) His mind active and enterprising 131 

(c) His moral power immense 131 

a A teacher because a philanthropist 132 

{d) Did not conceive the higher end of training 132 

2. His method of teaching 133 

(a) Form taught without superintendence 133 

(5) Number tdiWgXit w'lih. imperfect superintendence. .134 

a But begun with concrete objects ..134 

ft Employed the pupil's observation 134 

(c) Language taught by names, not things. .135 

« Object-teaching by ?i(a^r?2es of properties 137 

ft To be taught through slavish routine 137 

y Spelling-books for inarticulate babies 137 

3. Little to be gained directly from his method. . 138 

VII. Jacotot, an educator of mind, rather than of forces 138 

1. His history ...138 

2. His characteristics: 

{a) A dull and "objectionable" scholar.. 139 

(p) Self-taught even from childhood .140 

3. His style of teaching 140 

{a) To excite, maintain, and direct mental energy.. .140 

4. History of his methods: 

{a) Effort to teach Flemish children French .141 

(6) Principles established by the experiment 143 



ANALYSIS. 155 

a The language learned by direct study 143 

/5 The pupils their own teachers 143 

X The function of the teacher to direct mental 

action 143 

5. Principle: Learn one thing, and refer the rest to that. 144 

(a) Learn, so as to know thoroughly 144, 145 

(b) Repeat, so that nothing be forgntten 144, 145 

(c) Reflect, so that it becomes a mental possession. 144, 145 

(d) Verify, by comparison with facts 144, 145 

6. Illustration of Jacotot's method 146 

(a) Alphabetical teaching of reading discarded 140 

(&) First, the word-method. 147 

(c) Then the phonic method 148 

(d) The teacher's masterly inactivity 15o 

(e) It does teach the pupil to read 153 

V 1 1 r. Review of the previous lectures 1 52 



PRINCIPLES OF 
THE SCIENCE OF EDUCATION. 



I. General Peinciples. 

1. Evei'y child is an organism, furnished by the Cre- 
ator with inherent capabilities of action, and surround- 
ed by material objects which serve as stimulants to ac- 
tion. 

2. The channels of communication between the ex- 
ternal stimulants and the child's inherent capabilities of 
action are the sensory organs, by whose agency he re- 
ceives impressions. _ 

3. These impressions, or sensations, being incapable 
of resohition into anything: simpler than themselves, are 
the fundamental elements of all knowledge. The de- 
velopment of the mind bsing with the reception of sen- 
sation. 

4. The grouping of sensations forms perceptions, 
Avhich are registered in the mind as conception of ideas.* 
The development of the mind, which begins with the 
reception of sensations, is carried onward by the forma- 
tion of ideas. 

5. The action and reaction between the external 
stimulants and the mind's inherent powers, involving 

* By "conception," or "idea," is meant tlie trace, residuum, or ideal sub- 
stitute wliicli represents the real perception. 
156 



GENEEAL PRINCIPLES. l57 

processes of developraentt and implying growth, may be 
regarded as constituting a system of natural education. 

6. A system of education implies — (1) an educating 
influence, or educator; (2) a being to be educated, or 
learner; (3) matter for the exercise of the learner's pow- 
ers; (4) a method by which the action of these powers is 
elicited; and (5) an end to be accomplished. 

7. In the case before us, the educating influence, or 
educator, is God, represented by Nature, or natural cir- 
cumstances; the being to be educated, or learner, a 
child; the matter, the objects and phenomena of the ex- 
ternal world; the method, the processes by which this 
matter is brought into communication with the learner's 
mind; and the object or end in view, intellectual de- 
velopment and growth. 

In view of the different agencies concerned in effect- 
ing this intellectual education, and of their mutual re- 
lation, we arrive at the following: 

II. Principles of Natural Education. 

T. Nature, as an educator, recognizes throughout all 
his operations the inherent capabilities of the learner. 
The laws of the learner's being govern the educator's 
action, and determine what he does, and what he leaves 
undone He ascertains, as it were, from the child him- 
self how to conduct his education. 

II. The natural educator is the prime mover and di- 
rector of the action and exercise in which the learner's 
education consists. 

III. The natural educator moves the learners's mind 

t The term "development" is here employed for that unfolding of the 
natural powers of which "growth" is the registered result. 



158 PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION. 

to action by exciting his interest in the new, the won- 
derful, the beautiful; and maintains this action through 
the 25leasure felt by the learner in the simple exercise of 
his own powers — the pleasure of developing and growing 
by means of acts of observing, experimenting, discover- 
ing, inventing, performed by himself — of being his own 
teacher. 

IV. The natural educator limits himself to supply- 
ing material suitable for the exercise of the learner's 
powers, stimulating these powers to action, and main- 
taining their action. He co-operates with, but does not 
supersede, this action. 

V. The intellectual action and exercise in which the 
learner's education essentially consists nre performed by 
himself alone. It is what he does himself, not what is 
done for him, that educates him. 

VI. The child is therefore a learner who educates 
himself under the stimulus and direction of the natural 
educator. 

VII. The learner educates himself by his personal 
experience; that is, by the direct contact of his mind at 
Urst hand with the matter — object of fact — to be learned. 

VIII. The mind, in gaining knowledge for itself, 
proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, from par- 
ticular facts to general facts, or principles; and from 
principles to laws, rules, and definitions; and not in the 
inverse order. 

IX. The mind, in gaining knowledge for itself, pro- 
ceeds from the indefinite to the definite, from the com- 
pound to the simple, from complex aggregates to their 
component parts, from the component parts to their 
constitutional elements — by the method of Investiga- 



NATURAL EDITCATION. 159 

tion. It employs both Analysis and Synthesis in close 
connection. 

X. The learner's process of self-edncation is condi- 
tioned by certain laws of intellectual action. These are 
— (1) the Law of Consciousness; (2) of Attention, inchid- 
ing that of Individuation, or singling out; (3) of Relativ- 
ity, including those of Discrimination and Similarity; 
(4) of Retentiveness, including those of Memory and 
Recollection; (5) of Association, or Grouping; (6) of 
Reiteration, or Repetition, including that of Habit. 

XL Memory is the result of attention, and attention 
is the concentration of all the powers of the mind on the 
matter to be learned. The art of memory is the art of 
paying attention. 

XII. Ideas gained by personal experience are sub- 
jected by the mind to certain processes of elaboration ; 
as classification, abstraction, generalization, judgment, 
and reasoning. These processes imply the possession of 
ideas gained by personal experience, and they are all 
performed by the youngest child who possesses ideas. 

XIIL The learner's knowledge consists in ideas, gained 
from objects and facts by his own powers, and conscious- 
ly possessed — not in words. The natural educator, by 
his action and influence, secures the learner's possession 
of clear and definite primary ideas. Such ideas, so 
gained, are necessarily incorporated with the organic 
life of the learner's mind, and become a permanent part 
of his being. 

XIV. Words are the conventional signs, the objec- 
tive representatives, of ideas, and their A^alue to the 
learner depends on his previous possession of the ideas 



160 PRINCIPLES OP EDUCATION. 

they represent. The words, without the ideas, are not 
knowledge to him. 

XV. Personal experience is the condition of develop- 
ment, v/hether of the body, mind, or moral sense. What 
the child does himself, and loves to do, forms his habits 
of doing; but the natural educator, by developing his 
powers and promoting their exercise, also guides him to 
the formation of right habits. He therefore encourages 
the. physical development which makes the child healthy 
and robust, the intellectual development w^hich makes 
him thoughtful and reasonable, and the moral develop- 
ment which makes h'v.u capable of appreciating the beau- 
tiful and the good. This threefold development of the 
child's powers tends to the formation of his bodily, men- 
tal, and moral character, and prepares him to recognize 
the claims of religion. 

XVI. Education as a whole consists of development 
and training, and may therefore be defined as "the cul- 
tivation of all the native powers of the child, by exercis- 
ing them in accordance with the laws of his being with 
a view to development and growth." 



The above general facts or principles being the results 
of an analytical investigation into the nature of the child 
as a thinking being, and. into the processes by which his 
earliest education is carried on, constitute the Science 
of Natural Education. 

But as it is the same mind which is to be cultivated 
throughout, Natural Education is the pattern or model 
of Formal Education, and consequently the Science of 
Natural Education is the Science of Education in gen- 
eral. 



THE ART OF EDITCATION. 161 

The formal educator or teacher, therefore, who pro- 
fesses to take lip and continue the education begun by 
Nature, is to found his scheme of action upon the 
above principles, and in supplementing and compliment- 
ing the natural educators's work, he is to proceed on the 
same lines. He is not to intrude modes of action which 
contravene and neutralize the principles of natural edu- 
cation. 

III. The Art of Education. 

1. Art is the application of the laws of Science to a 
given subject under given circumstances. 

2. The Art of Education, or Teaching, is the explicit 
display of the implicit principles of the Science of Edu- 
cation. 

3. The principles already stated set the child or pu- 
pil before us as one who gains knowledge for himself, at 
first hand, by the exercise of his own native powers, 
through personal experience, and therefore as a learner 
who teaches himself. 

4 This is the central principle of the Art of Teach- 
ing. It serves as a limit to define both the functions of 
the formal teacher, and the nature of the matter on 
which the learner's powers are first to be exercised — 
that is, of the subject of instruction. 

5. The limit which includes also excludes — it pro- 
scribes as well as prescribes. The teacher who regards 
the child as a learner who is to teach himself through 
personal experience is therefore interdicted from doing 
anything to interfere with the learner's own method, — 
from telling, cramming, explaining, and even from cor- 
recting, merely on his own authority, the learner's blun- 
ders. The function assigned him by the Science of Edu- 



162 PRINCIPLES OP EbtJCAriOi^; 

cation is that of a stimulator, director, and superintend- 
ent of the learner's work^ and to that office he is to con- 
fine himself. 

6. But the limit in question determines also the 
character of the niaiter on which tlie learner's powers 
are to be first exercised. If he is to teach himself, he 
can only do so by exercising his mind on concrete ob- 
jects or actions — on facts. These furnish him with 
ideas. He cannot teach himself by abstractions, rules, 
and definitions, packed up for him in words by others; 
for these do not furnish him with ideas of his own. In 
all that he has to learn he must begin with facts — that is, 
with personal experience. It is clear, then, that the con- 
ception of the learner as a self-teacher determines both 
the manner in which he is to be taught and the means. 

7. This notion of the Art of Teacliing, which has 
specially in view the period of the child's life when the 
formal teacher first takes him in hand, in order to 
develop nnd train his mind, is capable of general appli- 
cation. It applies therefore, with the requisite modifi- 
cations, to instruction properly so called, which consists 
in the orderly and systematic building of knowledge 
into the mind, with a definite object. 

8. The teacher, therefore, educates by instructing, 
and instructs by educating. Education and instruction 
are different aspects of the same process. 

9. The sum of what has been laid down is, that the 
Art of Education consists in the practical application of 
principles gained by studying the nature of the child; 
the central principle, which governs all the rest, being 
that it is what tlie child does for and by himself that 
educates him. 



PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION-ANALYSIS. 



I. General Principles. 

1. The child is an organism. 155 

2. He receives impressions by the sensory organs 155 

3. These sensations are the elements of knowledge 155 

4. The grouping of sensations forms perceptions .155 

5. Action and re action constitute education 156 

6. A system of education requires: 

{a) An educator, (b) a learner, (c) matter, {d) method, 
{e) an end 156 

7. In natural education Nature is the teacher 156 

II. Principles of the Science of Education. 

1. Nature recognizes inherent capabilities 156 

2. The teacher is the mover and director. 157 

3. The learner's mind is stimulated by being interested . . 157 

4. Suitable material provided, the pupil does the work. 157 

5. The child is educated by what he does himself 157 

6. The child educates himself under direction 157 

7. 1'he learner educates himself by personal experience. 157 

8. The mind proceeds from concrete to abstracts .157 

9. The mind employs both analysis and synthesis 158 

10. Self-education is conditioned by the laws of: 

ifi) Consciousness, (p) attention, {c) relativity, id) re 

tentiveness, (6) association, (/) repetition 158 

11. Memory is the result of attention 158 

12. Sensations are elaborated by classification, etc 158 

13. The learner's knowledge is measured by ideas, 

not words 158 

14. Words valuable only to represent ideas possessed 159 

15. Personal experience a condition of development 159 

16. Education consists of development and training 159 

163 



164 ANALYSIS. 

Ill, Prineiples of the Art of Education. 

1. Art the application of generals to particulars 160 

2. The Art of Education explicit display of the Science. 160 

3. The child is a learner who teaches himself. .160 

4. This is the central principle. 160 

5. Telling, cramming, explaining, interdicted 161 

6. The pupil must begin with personal experience 161 

7. This art is to be practically applied to instruction.. 161 

8. Education by instruction, instruction by education. 162 

9. What the child does is what educates him 163 



\ 



THEORIES OF TEACHING WITH THEIR 
CORRESPONDING PRACTICE.=^ 



There are, as we know, many methods of teaching. 
There are, for instance, Ascham's, Hamilton's, and Ollen- 
dorf's method of teaching languages, and Pestalozzi's 
and Jacotot's methods of teaching generally; there are 
the methods of the old Grammar School, and those of 
the Dame Schools, and of the Kindergarten and a great 
many others. Each of these has a theory which under- 
lies it and accounts for its specialty. Into the details, 
however, of various methods I am not about to enter; my 
purpose is the more general one of endeavoring to ascer- 
tain the leading spirit which pervades them all, inde- 
pendently, for the most part, of the details. 

A little consideration of the subject, will, I believe, 
justify us in taking, as the criterion of this spirit, the 
aspect under which we regird the relation of the teacher to 
the pupil, and of both to their joint work. One teacher 
may regard the communication of his own ideas to his 
pupil as his proper and special function, and their minds 
as a sort tabula rasa, on which he has to write himself- 
According to this theory, he will then treat them merely 
as recipients, and will carefully tell them what they ought 
to receive, and how they ought to receive it. In placing 
facts before them, he will tell them what conclusions 

*Eead at a meeting of the Education Department of the Social Science 
Association, Monday, 26th April 1869. 

165 



166 THEORY OF EDUCATION. 

they are to draw from them. When his pupils commit 
faults he will correct them himself even though no use 
whatever is made of the corrections by them. He will 
be so careful that the pupil should jiot go wrong that he 
will continually interfere with his free action, by urging 
him to aim at this point and avoid that — in short, he 
will assume that the ability of the pupil to observe, 
compare, reason, think, depends almost entirely upon his 
own continual telling, showing, explaining, and thinking 
for him. Such a teacher evidently has a mean opinion of 
the pupil's powers, he assumes that they cannot work 
without the constant intervention of his own, and con- 
siders that in the joint operation carried bn by himself 
and his pupil, he takes, and ought to take, the larger 
share. 

Another teacher entertains a very different view of 
the relation he sustains to his pupil. He sets out, 
indeed, with a different estimate of the pupil's native 
ability, which he regards as competent to observe facts, 
compare them together and draw inferences respecting 
them without any authoritative interference on his part. 
He sees this native faculty at work in daily life, and 
therefore knows that it can be employed in self-instruc- 
tion. He trusts in it, therefore, and never tells the 
pupil what he can find out for himself; he does not 
superfluously explain relations between objects or facts 
which explain themselves by the simple juxtaposition of 
the objects and facts. He does not correct blunders 
which almost invariably arise either from insufficient 
knowledge or from carelessness: in the one case he 
requires the pupil to gain the knowledge required, or 
leaves the blunder for subsequent correction; in the 



THE OLD EDUCATION, AND THE NEW» 167 

other lie demands more attention, and expects the pupil 
to correct his own bhmders. He feels no inordinate 
anxiety about his pupil's occasional errors of judgment, 
provided that his mind is actively engaged in the subject 
under instruction, in short, seeing that the child is pur- 
suing,' in a natural way, his own self-teaching, he is 
anxious not to supersede his efforts by any needless, and 
probably injurious, interference with the process. He 
judges, therefore, that in the joint operation referred to 
it is the pupil and not himself who is to take the far 
larger share, inasmuch as the pupil's ultimate power of 
thinking will be in the inverse ratio of the teacher's 
thinking for him. 

It is evident that these different conceptions of the 
relation between the teacher and the pupil, are not 
easily reconcilable with each other, and that the practi- 
cal results must be respectively very different. These 
results I will not now endeavor to estimate, but address 
myself to my immediate purpose, which is to maintain 
the latter theory, and to show that learning is essentially 
self-tuition, and teaching the super intende7ice of the process; 
and, in short, that compendiously stated, the essential 
function of the teacher consists in helping the pupil to 
teach himself. 

It may be worth while to inquire for a few minutes 
into the exact meaning, as fixed by etymological consid- 
erations, of the words learn and teach. As words repre- 
sent ideas, we may thus ascertain what conceptions 
were apparently intended to be represented by these or 
equivalent symbols. Now it does seem remarkable that, 
in European languages at least, to lea/rn means to gather 
or glean for oneself — and teach^ to guide or superintend. 



168 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

In no case that I am aware of do these words imply a 
correlation of receptivity on the one hand, with communi- 
cativeness on the other. A brief reference to the facts 
will be sufficient to show this. I take the word learn 
first, because learning must precede teacJmig. Learn, in 
the earliest form of our langua2;e, which we erroneously 
call Anglo-Saxon instead of Original or Primitive Eng- 
lish, was leorn-ian, a derivative of the simpler form Icer-an, 
to teach. There is reason to believe that the longer 
form with the epenthetic n represents a class of words 
once not uncommon in Gothic languages, though now no 
longer recognized in practice — I mean words endued in 
themselves with the functions of reflective or passive 
verbs. Thus, in Mceso-Gothic, we have lukan, to shut or 
lock up, lukn-an, to lock oneself up, or to be locked up; 
wak an, to wake another, wakn-an, to wake oneself, to be 
awake. We have the corresponding awake and awaken 
ourselves. If this analogy be correct, then leorn-ian, as 
connected with l<^r-an, to teach, means to teach oneself, 
i. e., to learn. As, however, the director of a work 
often gets the credit due to his subaltern, so the person 
who directed his pupil to do his work of teaching him- 
self was formerly said — and the usage still exists — to 
iear?i or lam the pupil. In nearly all European lan- 
guages, this double force of the word is found. Three 
hundred years ago even it was unquestionably good 
English to say, as Cranmer does in his version of the 
Psalter — " Lead me forth in thy truth and learn me," 
and as Shakespeare does in the person of Caliban — "The 
red plague rid you for learning me your language." 
But what does the original root leer mean ? It is evi- 
dently equivalent to the Mceso-Gothic his or les ; s being 



ETYMOLOGY OF " TEACH " AND " LEARN." 169 

interchangeable with r, as we see in the Latin, arhos, arlor 
and in the German, eisen, compared with our iron. But 
the Moeso-Gothic his or les is identical with the German, 
les or lesen, and means to pluck, gather., acquire, read, learn, 
and we have still a trace of it in our provincial word 
leasing — gleaning or gathering up. The primitive mean- 
ing then of the root leer, of our original English must 
have been the same as that of the Moeso-Gothic les, 
though, for reasons already referred to, the causative 
sense to make to gather, acquire or learn, must have been 
very early supei'-added. On the whole, then, it appears 
sufficiently clear that to learn is to gather or glean for 
oneself — i. e., to teach oneself. But the correlative teach 
also requires a moment's consideration. This is derived 
from, or equivalent to, the original English, tcec or tcech 
(in taec-an or ttech-an), to the German, zeig (in zeigen), to 
the Moeso-Gothic tech (in techan), to the Latin doc (in 
docere), or die in di(c)scere (of which the ordinary form 
is discere) and to the Greek dEin (in 8eiicrvi.ii). This 
common root means to show, point out, direct, lead the way. 
The same idea is conveyed by the Fi'ench equivalents 
montrer and enseigner., both meaning, as we know, to teach. 

The etymology, then, in both instances supports the 
theory that learning is gathering up or acquiring for one- 
self, and teaching, the guiding, directing, or superintend- 
ing of that process. 

The pupil, then, by this theory is to advance by his 
own efforts, to work for himself, to learn for himself; to 
think for himself; and the teacher's function is to con- 
sist mainly in earnest and sympathizing direction. He 
is to devote his knowledge, intelligence, virtue, and ex- 
perience to that object. He has himself travelled the 



170 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

road before which he and his young companion are to 
travel together; he knovvs its difficulties, and can sym- 
pathize with the struggles which must be made against 
them. He will therefore endeavor to gain his pupil's 
confidence, by entering into them, and by suggesting 
adequate motives for exertion when he sees the needful 
courage failing. He will encourage and animate every 
honest and manful effort of his pupil, but, remembering 
that be is to be ^. guide and not a leaver, he will not even 
attempt to supersede that labor and exercise which con- 
stitute the value of the discipline to the pupil, which he 
cannot take upon himself without defeating the very 
end in vieAV. 

It is worth while here to meet a plausible objection 
which has been taken against this view of the teacher's 
function. If, it is said, the pupil really after all learns 
by himself without the intervention of the teacher's 
mind in the process — though the intervention of his^or- 
al influence is strenuously insisted on — then this superin- 
tendent of other people's efforts to gain knowledge may 
really have none himself; this director of machinery may 
know nothing of mechanics. This objection is perti- 
nent and deserves attention. It is obvious that the teach- 
er who is really able to enter into his pupil's difficulties 
in learning effectively ought to be well furnished with 
knowledge and experience. Knowledge of the subject 
under instruction is to be required of the teacher, both be- 
cause the recognized possession of it gives him weight 
and influence, and because the possession of a large 
store of well-digested knowledge is itself distinct evidence 
that its owner has gone through a course of healthful 
mental discipline, and is on that ground — other things 



THE TEACHEK A GUIDE. lYl 

being equal — a fit and proper person to superintend 
those who are going through the same discipline. 
Knowledge also of a special kind he ought to have — 
that derived from thoughtful study, accompanied by 
practice, of the machinery which he is to direct. He is 
not, by the assumption, himself an essential part of it, 
but as an overlooker or engineer he certainly ought to 
be acquainted with its nature and construction, so as to 
be able to estimate its working power, and to know 
when to start and when to stop it, to prevent both in- 
action and overaction. A teacher, then, without some 
knowledge of j)sychology, gained both systematically 
and by experience and observation, could hardly be con- 
sidered as fully equipped for this work. But I need not 
dwell further on this j)oint, though I could not well 
leave it unnoticed. 

It appears, then, that the teacher of a pupil who teach- 
es himself will find quite enough to do in his work of 
superintendence and sympathy. It is only as far as the 
mental process of learning that the pupil is in any sense 
independent of him. 

I do not profess to describe in philosophic terms 
what the mental process which we call learning really 
is, but it is necessary for my argument to maintain that 
whatever it is, it can no more be performed by deputy 
than eating, drinking, or sleeping, and further, that 
every one engaged in performing it is really teaching 
himself. If, then, the views Ihave suggested of the re- 
lation between the teacher and the learner be generally 
correct, and tlie latter really learns by teaching himself, 
it would follow that if we could only ascertain his meth- 
od as a learner, we should obtain the true elements of 



172 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

ours as teachers; or in other words, that true principles 
of the art of teaching would be educed from those in- 
volved in the art of learning, though the converse is by 
no means true. 

Tiie establishment of these principles would furnish 
us with a test of the real value of some of the practices 
in current use amona^st teachers, and perhaps help to lay 
the foundation of that teaching of the future, which will 
as I believe, indentify self-tuition, under competent 
guidance, with the scientific method of investigation. 

But I must endeavor to enlarge the field inquiry, and 
show that self-tuition under guidance is the only possi- 
ble method in the acquirement of that elementary in- 
struction which is the common property of the whole hu- 
man race. Long before the teacher, with his apparatus 
of books, maps, globes, diagrams, and lectures, appears 
in the field, the child has been pursuing his own educa- 
tion under the direction of a higher teacher than any ot' 
those who bear the technical name. He has been learn- 
ing the facts and phenomena which stand for words 
and phrases in the great book of Nature, and has also 
learned some of the conventional signs by which those 
facts and phenomena are known in his mother-tongue. 

As my general proposition is that the art of teaching 
should be, as far as possible founded on those processes 
by which nature teaches those who have no other teacher 
— those who learn by themselves — it is important to 
glance at a few of these processes. 

Nature's earliest lessons consist in teaching her pupils 
the use of their senses. The infant, on first opening his 
eyes, probably sees nothing. A glare of light stimulates 
the organ of sight, but makes no distinct impression up- 



THE INFANT AS A STTDENT. 173 

on it. In a short time, however, the light reflected from 
the various objects around him impinges with more or 
less force, upon the eye and impresses upon it the im- 
ages of tilings without, the idea of the image is duly 
transferred to the mind — and thus the first lesson in see- 
ing is given. 

This idea of form, is, however, complex in its charac- 
ter, which arises from the fact that the objects pre- 
sented to his attention are wholes or aggregates. He 
learns to recognize them in the gross before he knows 
them in detail. He has no choice but to learn them in 
this way. No child ever did learn them in any other 
way. Nature presents him with material objects and 
facts, or things already made or done. She does not 
invite him, in the first instance, before he knows in a 
general way the whole object, to observe the constituent 
parts, nor the manner in which the parts are related to 
the whole. She never, in condescension to his weakness 
of perception, separates the aggregate in its component 
elements — never presents these elements to his consider- 
lion one by one. In short, she ignores altogether in her 
earliest lessons the synthetical method, and insists on 
his employing only the analytical. As a student of the 
analytical method he proceeds with his investigations, 
observing resemblances and differences, comparing, con- 
trasting, and to some extent generalizing (and thus 
using the synthetical process), until the main distinc- 
tions of external forms are comprehended, and their 
more important parts recognized as distinct entities, to 
be subsequently regarded themselves as wholes and. de- 
composed into their constituent parts. Thus the child 
goes on with Nature as his teacher, learning to read, for 



174 Theories of EDucATioisr. 

himself and by himself the volume she spreads out before 
him, mastering first some of its sentences, then its phras- 
es and words, and lastly, a few of its separate letters. 

So with regard to the physical properties of objects as 
distinguished from their mechanical divisions or parts. 
What teacher but Nature makes the child an embryo 
experimental philosopher ? It is she who teaches him to 
teach himself the difference between hard and soft, bit- 
ter and sweet, hot and cold. He lays hold of objects 
within his reach, conveys them to his mouth, knocks 
them against the table or floor, and by performing such 
experiments incessantly gratifies, instructs, and trains 
the senses of sight, touch, taste, smelling, and hearing. 
At one time a bright and most attractive object is close 
at hand. It looks beautiful and he wonders what it can 
be. Nature whispers, " Find out what it is. Touch it." 
He puts his fingers obediently into the flame, burns 
them, and thus makes an experiment, and gains at the 
same time an important experience in the art of living. 
He does not, however, feel quite certain that this may 
not be a special case of bad luck. He therefore tries 
again, and of course with the same result. And now, 
reflecting maturely on what has taken place, he begins 
to assume that not only the flame already tried, but all 
flames will burn him — and thus dimly perceiving the 
relation between cause and effect, he is already track- 
ing, though slowly and feebly, the footsteps of the induct- 
ive philosophy. Even earlier in life — as soon, indeed, 
as he was born, as Professor Tyndall remarks — urged 
by the necessity of doing something for his living, he 
improvised a suction-pump, and thus showed himself 
to be, even from his birth, a student of practical science. 



nature's teaching. 175 

These instances will serve to show that Nature's 
earliest lessons are illustrations of the theory, that teach- 
ing essentially consists in aiding the pupil to teach him- 
self. Tlie child's method of learning is evidently self- 
tuition under guidance, and nothing else. He learns, 
i. e., gathers up, acqun*es, knows a vast number of facts 
relating to things about him; and, morever, by imita- 
tion solely, he gains a practical acquaintance with the 
arts of walking, seeing, hearing, etc. Who has taught 
him ? ISTature — himself — practically they are one. In 
the ordinary sense, indeed, of the word teaching. Nature 
has not taught him at all. She has given him no rules, 
no laws, no abstract principles, no formulae, no grammar 
of hearing, seeing, walking, or talking; she simply gave 
the faculty, supplied the material, atid the occasion for 
its exercise, and her pupil learnt to do hj doing. This is 
what ISature, the teacher, the guide, the directrix, did. 
But something more she did, or rather in her wisdom 
left undone. When her pupil, through carelessness and 
heedlessness, failed to see what was before him, when 
he blundered in his walking or talking, she neither in- 
terposed to correct his blunders, nor indulged in out- 
cries and objurgations against him. She bided her op- 
portunity. She went on teaching, he went on learning, 
and the blunders were in time corrected by the pupil 
himself. Even when he was about to burn his fingers, 
it was no part of her plan to hinder him from learning 
the valuable lessons taught by the ministry of pain. 
Perhaps in these respects, as well as in so many others, 
teachers of children might learn something from the 
example of their great Archididascalos. 

But it will be objected that Nature's wise, authorita- 



176 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

tive teaching can be no guide for us. She teaches by 
the law of exigency, and her pupil must perforce learn 
whether he will or not. In the society in which we 
live there is no such imperative claim, and the teacher, 
who appears as Nature's deputy, can neither wield her 
authority nor adopt her methods. In reply to this ob- 
jection it may be urged that Society's claims upon her 
members are scarcely less imperative than Nature's, and 
that the deputy can, and ought to, act out his superior's 
principles of administration. 

Suppose then, for instance, that Society requires that 
a child should learn to read. In this case, certainly, 
Nature will not intervene to secure that special instruc- 
tion, but the method adopted by her deputy may be, 
and ought to be, founded on hers. Every principle of 
Nature's teaching is violated in the oi'dinary plan of 
commencing with the alphabet. Nature, as I have al- 
ready said or implied, sets no alphabet whatever before 
her pupil; nor is there in the teaching of Nature any- 
thing that even suggests such a notion as learning 
A, B, C, Nature's teaching, it cannot be too fre- 
quently repeated, is at first analytical, not synthetical, 
and the essence of it is that the pupil makes the analy- 
sis himself. 

Our ordinary teacher, however, in defiance of Nature, 
commences his instruction in the art of reading with 
A, B, C, pointing out each letter, and at the same time 
uttering a sound which the child is expected to consider 
as the sound always to be associated with that sign. 
At length, after many a groan, the alphabet is learned 
perfectly and the teacher proceeds to the combinations. 
He points to a word, and the pupil says, letter by letter, 



THE WOED METHOD IN READING. Ill 

hee-a-tee, and then, naturally enough, comes to a dead 
stop. His work is done. Neither he nor Sir Isaac 
Newton in his prime, could take the next unexpected 
step and compound these elements into hat. The sphynx 
who proposes the riddle may indeed look menacingly 
for the answer, but by no possible chance can she get it. 
The teacher then comes to the rescue, utters the sound 
hat, which the child duly repeats, and thus the second 
stage in reading is accomplished. 

It will be observed that the only rational and sensible 
feature in this process is the utterance and echo of the 
sound hat in view of the word or sign, and if the teacher 
had begun with this, and not confused the child by giv- 
ing hira the notion that he was learning a sound, when 
he was in fact learning nothing but a name, Nature would 
have approved ofthe lesson, as analagous to those given by 
herself. She might also have asked the teacher to notice 
that the child learns to speak by hearing and using 
whole words. Nobody addresses him as hee-a-hee-wij, nor 
does he say em-a-em-em-a. He, in fact, deals with aggre- 
gates, compares them together, exercises the analytical 
faculty upon them, and employs the constituent ele- 
ments which he thus obtains in ever new combinations. 
There can be no doubt, then, that the child learns to 
speak, by imitation, analysis, a-^d practice. Why not, 
then, says Nature, let him learn reading in the same way ? 
Let him in view of entire words echo the sound of 
them received from the teacher; let him learn them thor- 
oughly as wholes; let him by analysis separate them in- 
to their syllables, and the syllables into their letters, and 
it will be found that the phonic faculty of the compound 
leads surely and easily to that of its separate parts. The 

G 



178 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

fact of our orthography is singularly anomalous is an ar- 
gument for, rather than against, the adoption of this 
plan of teaching to read. 

In pursuing this only fiatural method of instruction 
we notice that the pupil frequently repeats the same 
process, going over and over the same ground until 
he has mastered it, and as in learning to walk he 
often stumbled before he walked freely, and in learning 
to talk often blundered and stammered before he used 
his tongue readily, so while learning to read in Nature's 
school, he will make many a fruitless attempt, be often 
puzzled, often for awhile miss his path, yet all the while 
he is correcting his errors by added knowledge and 
experience, sharpening his faculties by practice, teaching 
himself by his own active efforts, and not receiving 
passively the explanations of others; deeply interested 
too in discovering for himself that which he would be 
even disgusted with if imposed upon by dogmatic 
authority, he is trained, even from the very beginning, 
in the method of investigation. I cannot but look upon 
him as illustrating faithfully and fairly in his practice the 
theory that learning is self-tuition under competent 
guidance, and that teaching is, or ought to be, the super- 
intendence of the process. 

Did time permit I could give many illustrations of the 
interest excited, and the efficiency secured, by this 
method of teaching reading. For example, 1 have seen 
and heard children earnestly petitioning to be allowed 
to pursue their lessons in reading, after a short experi- 
ence of it, by what they called the " finding out plan." 
It was known to me more than forty years ago, as a 
part of Jacotot's once renowned " Enseignement Uni- 



LORD BYKOn's EXPEBIENCE. lYO 

versa!," and I then put it to the severest test. It is also 
substantially contained in Mr. Curwen's " Look and Say 
Method," in the little book entitled "Reading without 
Spelling, or the Scholar's Delight," and in articles by 
Mr. Dunning and Mr. Baker, of Doncaster, in the 
Quarterly Journal of Education for 1834. A natural method, 
like others, requires of course to be judiciously directed, 
and the teacher's especial duty is in this, as in other 
methods, to maintain the interest of the lesson, and 
above all, to get the pupil, however young he may be, 
to think ; especially as, according to the principles already 
laid down, it is rather the pupil who learns than the 
master who teaches. As a case in point I quote a passage 
from the life of Lord Byron. Speaking of a school he 
was in when five years of age, he says, " I learned little 
there except to repeat by rote the first lesson of mono- 
syllables, ' God made man, let us love him, etc.,' by 
hearing it often repeated without acquiring a letter. 
Whenever proof was made of my progress at home, I 
repeated these words with the most rapid fluency, but 
on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat them, 
so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accom- 
plishments were detected, my ears boxed (which they 
did not deserve, seeing that it was by ear only that I 
had acquired my letters), and my intellects consigned 
to a new preceptor." This case, however, proves only 
that Byron had not been directed in teaching himself, 
and that he was not a pupil of the analytical method. 
His mind had taken no cognizance of the acquisitions 
which he had mechanically made. 

Another instance, much more to the point, is supplied 
in a passage which I extracted many years ago from a 



180 THEOEIES OF EDUCATION. 

Report of the Gaelic School Society, and which con- 
tains a most valuable lesson for the teachers of reading. 
"An elderly female in the parish of Edderton was most 
anxious to read the Scriptures in her native tongue. 
She did not even know the alphabet, and of course she 
began with the letters. Long and zealously she strove* 
to acquire these, and finally succeeded. She was then 
put into the syllable class, in which she continued some 
time, but made so little progress that, with a breaking 
heart, she retired from the school. The clergyman of 
the parish, on being made acquainted with these cir- 
cumstances, advised the teacher to send for her again, 
and instead of trying her with syllables, to which she 
could attach no meaning, to give her the sixth Psalm at 
once. This plan succeeded to admiration: and when the 
school was examined by a committee of presbytery, she 
read the thirty-seventh Psalm in a manner that aston- 
ished all present." Whether this important discovery 
— for it was nothing less — was made practically availa- 
ble in the teaching of the parish of Edderton I do not 
know; but I should not be surprised to find that the 
good old A, B, C, and the cabalistical b-a, ba; b-e, be, 
— in which Dr. Andrew Bell gravely tells us "the sound 
is an echo to the sense!'''' — is still going on there as at 
the beginning. 

I have detained you long over the practical illustra- 
tion contained in the npethod of teaching to read, be- 
cause it really is a complete application of the theory 
which I advocate, and involves such principles as these 
which I state with the utmost, brevity for want of time; — 

1. The pupil teaching himself, begins with tangible 
and concrete facts which he can comprehend, 



LIMITS OP THE TEACHEr's FUNCTION. 181 

not with abstract principles which he cannot. 

2. He employs a method — the analytical — which 

lies in his own power, not the synthetical, which 
mainly requires application ah extra. 

3. His early career is not therefore impeded by need- 

less precepts, and authoritative dogmas. 

4. He learns to become a discoverer and explorer on 

his own account, and not merely a passive recip- 
ient of the results of other j^eople's discoveries. 

5. He takes a degree of pleasure in the discoveries 

or acquisitions made by himself, which he can- 
not take in those made by others. 

6. In teaching himself he proceeds — he can only pro- 

ceed — in proportion to his strength, and is not 
perplexed and encumbered by explanations, 
which, however excellent in themselves, may not 
be adapted — generally are not adapted — to the 
actual state of his mind. 

7. He consequently proceeds from the known to the 

unknown, 

8. The ideas that he thus gains will, as natural se- 

quences of those already gained by the same 
method, be clear and precise as far as they go, 
and his knowledge will be accurate, though of 
course very limited, because it is his own. 

9. By teaching himself, and relying on his own pow- 

ers in a special case, he acquires the faculty of 
teaching himself generally — a faculty the value 
of which can hardly be overrated. 
If these principles are involved in the method of self- 
tuition they necessarily define the measure and limit of 
teacher's function, and show us what the art of teaching 



182 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

ought to be. Tliey seem also to render it probable that 
much that goes under the name of teaching rather hin- 
ders than helps the self- teaching of the pupil. The as- 
sumption of the pupil's inability to learn except through 
the manifold explanations of the teacher is inconsistent 
with this theory, nor less so is the universal practice of 
making technical definitions, abstract principles, scientific 
rules, etc., form so large a portion of the pabulum of 
the youthful mind. The superintending teacher by no 
means however, despises definitions, principles and rules, 
but he introduces thera when the pupil is prepared for 
them, and then he gets him to frame them for himself. 
The self-teaching student has no power to anticipate the 
time when these deductions from facts — for such they all 
ultimately are — will, by the natural course of mental de- 
velopment, take their proper place in the course of in- 
struction, and any attempt to force him to swallow them 
merely as intellectual boluses prematurely can only end 
in derangement of the digestive organs. His mind can 
digest, or at least begin to digest, facts which he sees 
for himself, but not definitions and rules which he has 
had no share in making. He cannot, in the nature of 
things, assume the conclusions of others drawn from facts 
of which he is ignorant as his conclusions, and he is not 
therefore really instructed by passively receiving them. 
Those who take a different view from this of teaching 
sometimes plead that inasmuch as rules and principles 
are compendious expressioLS representing many facts, the 
pupil does in learning them economize time and labor. 
Experience does not, however, support this view, but it 
is rather against it. The elementary pupil cannot, if he 
would, comprehend for instance the metaphysical, dis- 



NO "new education." 183 

tinctions and definitioas of grammar. They are utrlerly 
unsnited for his stage of developenient, and if violently 
intruded into his mind they cannot be assimilated to 
its substance, but must remain there as crude, undigest- 
ed matter until the system is prepared for them. When 
that time arrives, he will welcome these compendious 
generalizations of facts which when prematurely offered 
he rejected with disgust. Stuffing a pupil with ready- 
made rules and formulae may perhaps make an adepi in 
crammino^, but is crammino* the be-all and end-all of 
education ? 

But I must furl my sails and make for land. The 
idea which 1 have endeavored to give of the true rela- 
tion of the pupil to the teacher, and which represents 
the former as carrying on his own self-tuition under the 
wise superintendence of the latter, is of course not new. 
Nothing strictly new can be said about education. The 
elements of it may easily be found in the principles and 
practice of x^scham, Montaigne, Ratich, Milton, Co- 
menius, Locke, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jacotot, and Her- 
bert Spencer. Those who are interested in the subject 
may find an account of the views and methods of these 
eminent men in Mr. Quick's valuable little book on PJdu- 
cational Reformers. All, in fact, who have insisted on 
the great importance of eliciting the pupil's own efforts 
and not superseding, enfeebling and deadening them by 
too much telling and explaining — all, too, who have 
urged that abstract rules and principles should, in teach- 
ing, follow, not precede, the examples on which they are 
founded, have virtually adopted thetheory.which I have 
endeavored to state and illustrate. They have, in sub- 
stance, admitted that the teacher's function is defined 



184 THEORIES OF EDITCATION. 

by a criie conception of the mental operation which we 
call learning, and that that operation is radically and 
essentially the work of the pupil, and cannot be per- 
formed for him. 

If I have succeeded at all in the development of my 
theory, it must be obvious that a pupil thus trained must 
be a more accurate observer, a more skilful investigator, 
more competent to deal with subjects of thought in an 
intelligent way; in a word, a more awakened, thinker 
than one trained in accordance with the opposite theory. 
The process he goes through naturally tends to make 
him such, and to prepare him to appreciate and adopt 
in his subsequent career the methods of science. It is 
the want of that teaching which comes from himself 
that makes an ordinary pupil the slave of technicalities 
and routine, that prevents him from grappling with a 
common problem of arithmetic or algebra unless he hap- 
pens to remember the rule, and from demonstrating a 
geometrical proposition if he forgets the diagram; 
which, even though he may be a scholar of Eton or 
Harrow, leaves him destitute of power to deal at sight 
with a passage of an easy Greek or Latin author. In 
the great bulk of our teaching, with of course many 
and notable exceptions, the native powers of the pupil 
are not made the most of, and hence his knowledge, 
even on leaving school, is too generally a farrago of 
facts only partially hatched into principles, mingled in 
unseemly jumble with rules scarcely at all understood, 
exceptions claiming equal rank with the rules, defini- 
tions dislocated, from the objects they define, and tech- 
nicalities which clog rather than facilitate the operations 
of the mind. 



BETTER SCHOOLS FROM BETTER TEA.CHING. 185 

A slight exercise of our memories, and a slight glance 
at the actual state of things amongst us, will, I believe, 
witness to the substantial truth of this statement. If, 
however, we want other testimony, we may find it in 
abundance in the Reports and evidence of the four 
Commissions which have investigated the state of edu- 
cation amongst us; if we want more still, we may be 
supplied — not, 1 am sorry to say, to our heart's content, 
but discontent — in the reports of intelligent official ob- 
servers from abroad. If we want more still, let us read 
the petitions only lately presented to the House of Com- 
mons from the highest medical authorities, who com- 
plain that medical education is rendered abortive and 
impossible by the wholly unsatisfactory results of mid- 
dle-class teaching. Does it appear unreasonable to sup- 
pose that such a chorus of dispraise and dissatisfaction 
could not be raised unless there were something in the" 
methods of teachius^ which naturally leads to the results 
complained of ? If the quality of the teaching — I am 
not considering the quantity — is not responsible for the 
quality of its results, I really do not know where we are 
to find the cause, and failing in detecting the cause, how 
are we to hegin even our search for the remedy ? Theories 
of teaching which distrust the pupil's native ability, 
which in one way or other repress, instead of aiding, the 
natural development of his mind, which surfeit him with 
technicalities, which impregnate him with vague in- 
fructuous notions that are never brought to the birth, 
that cultivate the lowest faculties at the expense of the 
highest, that make him a slave of the Rule-of-Thumb 
instead of a master of principles — are these theories, 
which have done much of the mischief, to be still relied 



186 THEORIES OP EDUCATION. 

Oil to supply the reform we need ? Or shall we find, at 
least, some of the germs of future life in the other 
theory, which from the first confides in, cherishes, and 
encourages the native powers of the child; which take 
care that his acquisitions, however small, shall be made 
by himself, and secures their possession by repetition 
and natural association; which invests his career with 
the vivid interest which belongs to that of a discoverer 
and explorer of unknown lands; which, in short, to 
adopt the striking words of Burke, instead of serving 
up to him barren and lifeless truths, leads him to the 
stock on which they grew; which sets him on the track 
of invention, and directs him into those paths in which 
the great authorities he follows made their own discov- 
eries ? Is a theory which involves such principles, and 
leads to such results^ worthy the consideration of those 
who regard education as pre-eminently the civilizing 
agent of tlie world, and laiuent that England, as a na- 
tion, is so little fraught with its spirit ? 



THEORY OF TEACHIN&.-AMLYSIS, 



I. The Relation of the Teacher to the Pupil. 

1. The teacher that communicates ideas 165 

{a) Has a mean opinion of the pupil's powers 166 

2. The teacher that guides to ideas 166 

{a) Pupils competent to observe, compare, infer 166 

II. Learning is Self- Tuition. 

1. Etymology of the words "learn "and "teach" 167 

2. The teacher to be a guide 170 

(a) The teacher must know psychology. . 171 

(b) He has quite enough to do 171 

(c) The pupil's independence partial 171 

(d) Methods of teaching derived from methods of 

learning _ 172 

3. Self-tuition the only acquirement of knowledge 172 

{a) Nature's process of teaching: 

a First, use of the senses 173 

/i Analysis precedes synthesis 173 

X The child an experimental philosopher .174 

d The child learns to do by doing . 175 

s He corrects his own blunders .-175 

(b) Society's claims, vs. Nature's 176 

a Learning to read... 176 

y5 Lord Byron's experience 179 

X The old woman of Edderton 179 

(c) Principles illustrated. 

a The pupil begins with facts 180 

^ He uses analysis . . 180 

X He is not impeded by precepts.. 180 

d He learns to be an explorer 180 

£ He takes pleasure in his discoveries 181 

^ He proceeds according to liis strength... ..181 

187 



188 THEORIES OF EDUCATION. 

77 He goes from the known to the unknown 181 

5 His ideas are clear so far as they go 181 

I He acquires the habit of self-teaching .181 

{d) Application to prevalent methods.. 181 

a Much teaching a hindrance 182 

(5 Principles should be developed, not memorized.. 183 

y No economy in cramming 182 

HI, These principles accepted by all great teachers .183 

1. Want of self teaching makes one a slave of routine. 184 

2. Reports show inefficiency of present schools. 184 

3. The remedy, better knowledge of our work_.. 185 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE DRAINING 
OF THE TEACHER. 



In the first place, I wish to make a few remarks on the 
term "profession," as applied to teaching. It cannot be 
said, strictly, that we have in England, at this moment, 
any profession of teaching. The term "profession," 
when properly, that is, technically employed, connotes 
or implies " learned;" and involves the idea of an incor- 
porated union of persons qualified by attainments and by 
a scientific training for a particular calling in life, and 
duly authorized to pursue it. It is in this sense alone 
that the term is employed, in speaking of the professions 
of law, medicine and theology. As, however, in the 
case of education — and speaking particularly of second- 
ary education — no positive attainments, no special train- 
ing, no authoritative credentials whatever are demanded 
as professional qualifications, it is obvious that there is, 
strictly speaking, no profession of teaching amongst us, 
and that when we use the term *• profession" in this ap- 
plication of it, we use it in a vague, inaccurate and un- 
technical sense. As to attainments none whatever are 
required of the person whg "professes" to teach. The 
profound ignoramus, if sufficiently endowed with assur- 
ance, may compete for public patronage on nearly equal 
terms with the most cultivated student of learning and 
science, and may in many cases even carry off the prize; 
while as to training, the teacher who has severely disci- 

189 



190 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING. 

plined his mind by the study of the theory of education, 
and carefully conformed his practice to it, scarcely 
stands a better chance of success than the ignorant pre- 
tender who cannot even define the term "education; " 
who has no conception of the meaning of "training; " 
and whose empirical self-devised methods of instruction 
constitute the sum total of his qualifications for the office 
he assumes. 

Lastly, as to credentials, both classes of teachers, the 
qualified and the unqualified, stand on precisely the same 
footing before the public. No authoritative exequatur dis- 
tinguishes the competent from the incompetent teacher. 
Both jostle each other in the strife for pre-eminence, and 
the pul)lic look on all the while with indifference, appar- 
ently unconscious that their children's dearest interests 
are involved in the issue. 

It is obvious then, that as neither knowledge, training, 
nor credentials are required of the teacher, there can be 
no " profession of teaching." The assumption, however, 
that there is such a profession, and that any one who 
pleases may claim to be a member or it, has proved very 
injurious to the interests of the public. Girls left un- 
provided for, yoimg widows left in a similar predicament, 
and many others suddenly plunged into difficulties and 
obliged to cast about for a livelihood, often can think of 
no other employment than that of teaching, which, as be- 
ing in common parlance " professional," is therefore " gen- 
teel;" and accordingly, without a single qualification, of- 
ten with the disqualification that they have nearly all 
their previous lives regarded teachers and teaching with 
contempt, declare themselves before the world ready to 
teach, The declaration, if it means anything, means 



Reaching only a semi-peofession. 191 

that they profess themselves ready to undertake the 
practice of an art which, beyond most others, requires 
peculiar knowledge, experience, culture, and tact. It 
means further, that they are prepared to watch oyer the 
development of a child's growing mind, to furnish it 
with suitable mental food at the proper time; to see that 
the food is thoroughly digested; to stimulate it to exer- 
cise its faculties in the right direction; to curb its aberra- 
tions; to elicit the consciousness of independent power ; 
to form, in short, habits of thinking for life-long use. 
All this, and very much more, is really involved in the 
conception we ought to form of a teacher's functions; 
and yet we see every day persons who have not even a 
conception of this conception : persons destitute of all 
knowledge of the subjeecs they profess to teach, of the 
nature of the mind which is to be taught, of the practical 
art itself, of the principles of education which underlie the 
art, and of the experience of the most eminent instructors, 
blindly and rashly forcing themselves before the world 
as teachers. Such persons seem not to be aware that if 
with similar qualifications they were to undertake to 
practice the arts of medicine, law, architecture, engi- 
neering, or music, they would be laughed at every where. 
Yet these very persons, who would be instinctively con- 
scious of their incompetency, without knowledge or train- 
ing, to perform a surgical operation, to steer a vessel, to 
build a house, or to guide a locomotive, are ready, at a 
moment's warning, to perform any number of operations 
on a child's mind, and to undertake the direction of its 
mental or moral forces — a task, considering the delicacy 
of the machinery with which they have to deal, more dif- 
ficult in many respects than any other that can be named. 



192 IMPOETANCE OP TRAINING. 

In maintainitis^, however, generally that the professor 
of an art should understand its principles, and that he 
cannot understand them without study and training, I 
do not mean to assert that there may not be found 
among those who feel themselves suddenly called upon 
to act as teachers, especially among women, many, who 
without obvious preliminary training, are really already 
far advanced in actual training for the task they assume. 
In these cases, superior mental culture, acute insight into 
character, ready tact and earnest sympathy constitute, 
pro tanto^ a real preparation for the profession; and sup- 
ply, to a considerable extent, the want of technical train- 
ing. To such persons it not unfrequently happens that 
a matured consciousness of the importance of the task 
they have undertaken, and actual contact with the work 
itself, rapidly suggest what is needed to supplement 
their inexperience. Such cases, however, as being rare 
and exceptional, are not to be relied on as examples. 
Even in them, moreover, a thoughtful study of the Sci- 
ence of Education, and of the correlated Art, would 
guide the presumed faculty to better results than can be 
gained without it. 

We can have little hesitation then in asserting that 
the pretension to be able to teach without knowing even 
what teaching means; without mastering its processes 
and methods as an art; without gaining some acquaint- 
ance with its doctrines as a science; without studying 
what has been said and done by its most eminent prac- 
titioners, is an unwarrantable pretension which is so near 
akin to empiricism and quackery,* that it is difficult to 
make the distinction. 

* "Empiric; one of a sect of ancient pliysicians, who practised from 



PRIMARY TEACHING. 198 

There are, however, two or three fallacious arguments 
sometimes urged against the preliminary training of the 
teacher which it is important briefly to discuss. 

The iirst is, that " granting the need of such training 
for teachers of advanced subjects, it is unnecessary for 
the teaching of elementary subjects. Anybody can 
teach a child to read, write, and cipher." This is, no 
doubt, true, if teaching means nothing more than me- 
chanical drill and cram; but if teaching is an art and 
requires to be artistically conducted, it is not true. A 
teacher is one who, having carefully studied the nature 
of the mind, and learned by reading and practice, some 
of the means by which that nature may be influenced, 
applies the resources of his art to the child-nature before 
him. Knowing that in this nature there are forces, 
moral and intellectual, on the development of which the 
child's well-being depends, he draws them forth by 
repeated acts, exercises them in order to strengthen 
them, trains them into faculty, and continually aims at 
making all that he does, all that he gets his pupils to 
do, minister to the consciousness of growth and power 
in the child's mind. If this is a correct description of 
the teacher's function, it is obvious that it applies to 
every department of the teacher's work; as much to the 
teaching of reading and arithmetic as to that of Greek 
plays, or of Differential Calculus. The function does 
not change with the subject. But I go further, and 
maintain that the beginning of the process of education 
is even_more important in some respects than the later 
stages. II n''y a que le premier pm qui coute. The teacher 

experience, not from theory."—'* Quack; ii boastful pretender to arts he 
does not understand." 



194 IMPORTANCE OF TRAlNIN(i. 

who takes in baud the instruction and direction of a 
mind wliicli has never been taught before, commeaces a 
series of processes, which by our theory should have a def- 
inite end in view — and that end is to induce in the child's 
mind the consciousness of power. Power is, of course, 
a relative term, but it is not inapplicable to the case be- 
fore us. The teacher, even of reading, who iirst directs 
the child's own observation on the facts in view — the 
combination of tlie letters in separate words or syllables 
— gets him to compare these combinations together, and 
notice in what respect they differ or agree, to state him- 
self the difference of agreement — to analyze each new 
compound, into its known and unknown elements, ap- 
plying the known, as far as possible, to interpret the 
unknown — to refer each fresh acquisition to that first 
made, to find out for himself everything which can be 
found out through observation, inference and reflection 
— to look for no help,-except in matters (such as the 
sounds) which are purely conventional — to teach him- 
self to read, in short, by the exercise of his own mind — 
such a teacher, it is contended, while getting the child 
to learn how to read, is in fact, doing much more than 
this — he is te:iching the child how to use his mind — how 
to observe, investigate, think.* It will probably be 
granted that a process of this kind — if practicable — 
would be a valuable initiation for the child in the art of 
learning generally, and that it would necessarily be 
attended by what I have described as a conciousness of 
power. But, moreover, — which is also very important — 



* See this process fully described in the Author's third lecture "On 
the Science and Art of Education," published by the College of Precep- 
tors, p. 63. 



4 

THE BEST TEACHING NEEDED FIRST. 195 

it woald be attended by a consciousness of pleasure. 
Even the youngest child is sensible of the charm of do- 
ing things himself — of finding out things for himself ; 
and it is of cardinal importance in elementary instruc- 
tion to lay the grounds for the association of pleasure 
with mental activity. It would not be difficult, but it 
is unnecessary, to contrast such a method as this, which 
awakens all the powers of the child's mind, keeps them 
in vivid and pleasurable exercise, and forms good men- 
tal habits, with that too often pursued, which deadens 
the faculties, induces idle habits, distaste for learning, 
and incapacity for mental exertion. 

Tt is clear, then, that "any teacher" cannot teach even 
reading, so as to make it a mental exercise, and, conse- 
quently, a part, of real education — in other words, so as 
" to make all that he does, and all he gets his pupil to 
do, minister to the consciousness of growth and power 
in the child's mind." So far then from agreeing with 
the proposition in question, I believe that the early 
development of a child's mind is a work that can only 
effectually be performed by an accomplished teacher; 
such a one as T have already described. In some of the 
best German elementary schools men of literary distinc- 
tion. Doctors in Philosophy, are employed in teaching 
children how to read, and in the highly organized 
Jesuit Schools, it was a regulation that only those 
teachers who liad been specially successful in the higher 
classes should be entrusted with the care of the lowest. 

There is, moreover, another consideration which de- 
serves to be kept in view in discussing the competency 
of '• any teacher " to take charge of a child who is 
beginning to learn. Most young untrained teachers 



196 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING. 

fancy when they give their first lesson to a child who 
has not been taught before, that they are commencing 
its education. A moment's reflection will show that 
this is not the case. They may indeed be commencing 
its formal education, but they forget that it rias been 
long a pupil of that great School, of which ^Nature is 
the mistress, and that their proper function is to continue 
the education which is already far advanced. In that 
School, observation and experiment, acting as superin- 
tendents of instruction, through the agency of the child's 
own senses, have taught it all it knows at the time 
when natural is superseded, or rather supplemented by 
formal education. Can it then be a matter of indiffer- 
ence whether or not the teacher understands the pro- 
cesses, and enters into the spirit of the teaching carried 
on at that former School; and is it not certain that his 
want of knowledge on these points will prove very inju- 
rious to the young learner ? The teacher who has this 
knowledge will bring it into active exercise in every 
lesson that he gives, and, as I have shown in the case of 
teaching to read, will make it instrumental in the devel- 
opment of all the intellectual faculties of the child. He 
knows that his method is sound, because it is based on 
Nature; and he knows, moreover, that it is better than 
Nature's, because it supersedes desultory and fortuitous 
action by that which is organized with a view to a defi- 
nite end. The teacher who knows nothing of Nature's 
method, and fails, therefore, to appreciate its spirit, de- 
vises at haphazard a method of his own which too 
generally has nothing in common with it, and succeeds 
in effectually quenching the child's own active energies; 
in making him a passive recipient of knowledge, which 



nature's teaching recognized. 197 

he has had no share in gaining; and in finally converting 
him into a mere unintellectual machine. Untrained 
teachers, especially those who, as the phrase is, "com- 
mence " the education of children, are, as yet, little 
aware how ranch of the dulness, stupidity, and distaste 
for learning which they complain of in tiicir pupils, is 
of their own creation. The upshot then of this discus- 
sion is, not that " any teacher," but only those teachers 
who are trained in the art of teaching can he safely 
entrusted with the education of the child's earliest 
efforts in the career of instruction. 

Another fallacy, which it is important to expose, is 
involved in the assumption, not unfrequently met with, 
that a man's "choosing to fancy that he has the ability 
to teach, is a sufficient warrant for his doing so," leav- 
ing, it is added, "the public to judge whether or not he 
is fit for his profession." Ridiculous as this proposition 
may appear, I have heard it gravely argued for and 
approved in a soiiference of teachers, many of whom no 
doubt, had good grounds of their own for their adher- 
ejice to it. Simply stated, it is the theory of free trade 
in education. Every one is to be at liberty to offer his 
wares, an.d it is the buyer's business to take care that 
he is not cheated in the bargain. It is unnecessary for 
my present purpose to say more on the general proposi- 
tion than this — that the state of the market and the 
frequent inferiority of the wares invalidate the assump- 
tion of the competency of the buyer to form a correct 
estimate of the value of the article he buys, and, more- 
over, that an immense quantity of mischief may be, and 
actually is done to the parties most concerned, the 
children of the buyers, while the hazardous experiment 



198 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING. 

is going on. As to the minor proposition, tbe man's 
" choosing to fancy that he has the ability " to teach is 
a sufficient warrant for his doing so, it is obviously in 
direct opposition to the argument 1 am maintaining. It 
cannot for a moment be admitted that a man's " choos- 
ing to fancy that he has the ability " to discharge 
a function constitutes a sufficient warrant for the in- 
dulgence of his fancy, especially in a field of action 
where the dearest interests of society are at stake. We 
do not allow a man " who chooses to fancy that he has 
the ability " to practise surgery, to operate on our limbs 
at his pleasure, and only after scores of disastrous ex- 
periments, decide whether he is "fit to follow the pro- 
fession" of a surgeon. Nor do we allow a man who 
may "choose to fancy that he has the ability" to take 
the command of a man-of-war, to undertake such a 
charge on the mere assurance that w^e may safely trust 
to his "inward impulse." And if we require the strict- 
est guarantees of competency, where our lives and 
property are risked, shall we be less nnxious to secure 
them when the mental and moral lives of our children — 
the children of our commonwealth — are endangered ? I 
repudiate then entirely this doctrine of an "inward im- 
pulse," which is to supersede the orderly training of the 
teacher in the art of teachinty. It has been tried Ions: 
enough, and has been found utterly wanting. Fallacies, 
however, are often singularly tenacious of life, and we 
are not therefore surprised at Mr. Meiklejohn's asser- 
tion, that in more than 50 per cent, of the letters which 
he examined, the special qualification put forw^ard by 
the candidates was their "feeling" that they could per- 
form the duties of the office in question to their own satis- 



THE "inward impulse" THEORY. 199 

faction. ( ! ) This is obviously only another specimen, 
though certainly a remarkable one, of the "inward im- 
pulse " theory. 

The third fallacy T propose to deal with is couched in 
the common assumption that "any one who knows a 
subject can teach it." There can be no doubt that the 
teacher should have an accurate knowledge of the sub- 
ject he professes to teach, and especially for this, if for 
no other reason — that as his proper function is to guide 
the process by which his pupil is to learn, it will be of 
the greatest advantage to him as a guide to have gone 
himself through the process of learning. But, then, it 
is very possible that although his experience has been 
real and personal, it may not have been conscious — that 
is, that he may have been too much absorbed in the 
process itself to take account of the natural laws of its 
operation. This conscious knowledge of the method by 
which the mind gains ideas is, in fact, a branch of Psy- 
chology, and he may not have studied that science. 
Nor was it necessary for his purpose, as a learner, that 
he should, study it. But the conditions are quite altered 
when he becomes a teacher. He now assumes the direc- 
tion of a process which is essentially not his but the 
learner's; for it is obvious that he can no more think for 
the pupil than he can eat or sleep for him. His efficient 
direction, then, will mainly depend on his thoughtful 
conscious knowledge of all the conditions of the prob- 
lem which he has to solve. That problem consists in 
getting his pupil to learn, and it is evident that he may 
know his subject, without knowing the best means of 
making his pupil know it too, which is the assumed end 
of all his teaching: in other words, he may be an adept 



200 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING. 

in his subject, but a novice in the art of teaching it. 
Natural tact and insight may, in many cases, rapidly 
suggest the faculty that is needed ; but the position still 
remains unaffected that knowing a subject is a very 
different thing from knowing how to teach it. This 
conclusion is indeed involved in the very conception of 
an art of teaching, an art which has principles, laws, and 
processes peculiar to itself. 

But, again, a man profoundly acquainted with a sub- 
ject may be unapt to teach it by reason of the very 
height and extent of his knowledge. His mind habitu- 
ally dwells among the mountains, and he has therefore 
small sympathy with the toilsome plodders on the plains 
below. It is so long since he was a learner himself that 
he forgets the difficulties and perplexities which once 
obstructed his path, and which are so painfully felt by 
those who are still in the condition in which he once was 
himself. It is a hard task, therefore, to him to conde- 
scend to their condition, to place himself alongside of 
them, and to force a sympathy which he cannot nat- 
urally feel with their trials and experience. The teacher, 
in this case, even less than in the other, is not likely to 
conceive justly of all that is involved in the art of 
teaching, or to give himself the trouble of acquiring it. 
Be this, however, as it may, both illustrations of the 
case show that it is a fallacy to assert that there is any 
necessary connection between knowing a subject, and 
knowing how to teach it. 

Having now shown that the present state of public 
opinion in England, which permits any one who pleases 
to '*set up " as a teacher without regard to qualifications 
is inconsistent with the notion that teaching is an art for 



CRAMMING DEFINED. 201 

the exercise of which preliminary training is necessary, 
and disposed of those prevalent fallacies which are, to a 
great extent, constituents of that public opinion, I pro- 
ceed to give some illustrations of teaching as it is in 
contrast with teaching as it should be. The fundamen- 
tal proposition, to which all that I have to say on the 
jDoint in question must be referred, is this — that teach- 
ing, in the proper sense of the terra, is a branch of edu- 
cation, and that education is the development and train- 
ing of the faculties with a view to create in the pupil's 
mind a consciousness of power. Every process em- 
ployed in what is called teaching that will not bear thiis 
test is, more or less, of the essence of cramming, and 
cramming is a direct interference with, and antagonistic 
to, the true end of education. Cramming may be defined 
for our present purpose as the didactic imposition on the 
child's mind of ready-made results, of results gained by 
the thought of other people, through processes in which 
his mind has not been called upon to take a part. During 
this performance the mind of the pupil is for the most 
part a passive recipient of the matter forced into it, and 
the only faculty actively employed is memory. The re- 
sult is that memory instead of being occupied in its 
proper function of retaining the impression left on the 
mind by its own active operations, and being therefore 
subordinate and subsequent to those operations, is forced 
into a position to which it has no natural right, and 
made to precede, instead of waiting on, the mind's ac- 
tion. Thus the true sequence of causes and consequenc- 
es is disturbed, and memory becomes a principal agent 
in instruction. If we further reflect that ideas gained 
by the direct action of the mind naturally find their 



202 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING. 

proper place among the other ideas already existing 
there by the law of association, while those arbitrarily 
forced into it do so only by accident — for the mind re- 
ceives only that which it is already prepared to receive 
— we see that cramming, which takes no account of pre- 
paredness, is absolutely opposed to development, that is 
to education in the true sense of the term. Cramming, 
therefore, has nothing in common with the art of teach- 
ing, and the great didactic truth is established that it is 
the manner or method rather than the thing taught, that 
constitutes the real value of the teaching. 

Mr. D'Arcy Thomson, in his interesting book entitled 
*' Wayside Thoughts," referring to the usual process of 
cramming in education, compares it to the deglutition by 
the boa constrictor of a whole goat at a meal, but he re- 
marks that while the boa by degrees absorbs the animal 
into his system, the human boa often goes about all his 
life with the undigested goat in his stomach ! There 
may be some extravagance in this whimsical illustration, 
but it involves after all, a very serious truth. How 
many men and women are there who, if they do not car- 
ry the entire goat with them through life, retain in an 
undigested condition huge fragments of it, which j^ress 
as a dead weight on the system — a source of torpidity 
and uneasiness, instead of becoming through proper as- 
similation a means of energy and power. The true edu- 
cator, who is at the same time a genuine artist, proceeds 
to his work on principles diametrically opposed to those 
involved in cramming. In the first place he endeavors 
to form a just conception of the nature, aims, and ends 
of education, as of a theory which is to govern his pro- 
fessional action. According to this conception " educa- 



METHOD OF THE TRUE TEACHER. 203 

tion is tbe training carrie«Tl on consciously and continu- 
ously by the educator with the view of converting de- 
sultory and accidental force into organized action, and 
of ultimately making the child operated on by it a 
health}^, intelligent, moral, and religious man." Con- 
fining himself to intellectual training, he sees that this 
must be accomplished through instruction, which is 
"the orderly placing of knowledge in the mind with a 
definite object; the mere aggregation of incoherent ideas, 
gained by desultory and unconnected mental acts being 
no more instruction tban heaping bricks and stone to- 
gether is building a house."* These conceptions of the 
nature and aim of education, and of its proper relation 
to instruction, suggest to him the consideration of the 
means to be employed. These means to be effectual 
must have an exact scientific relation to the nature of 
the machinery that is to be set in motion; a relation 
which can only be understood by a careful study of the 
machinery itself. If it is a sort of machinery which 
manifests its energies in acts of observation, perception, re- 
flection, and remembering, and. depends for its efficacy upon 
attention, he must study these phenomena subjectively in 
relation to his own conscious experience, and. objectively 
as exhibited in the experience of others. Regarding, fur- 
ther, this plexus of energies as connected with a base to 
which we give the name of mind, he must proceed to 
study the nature of the mind in general, and especially 
note the manner in which it acts in the acquisition of 
ideas. This study will bring him into acquaintance with 
certain principles or laws which are to guide and control 
his future action. The knowledge thus gained w411 con- 
*See the Author's " Lectures ou the Science and Art of Education." 



204 IMPOETANCE OP TRAINING. 

stitute bis initiation into tbe Science and Art of Educa- 
tion. 

The Science or Theory of Education then is seen to 
consist in a knowledge of those principles of Psychol- 
ogy, which account for the processes by which the mind 
gains knowledge. It therefore serves as a test, by 
which the Art or Practice of Education may be tried. 
All practices which are not in accordance with the 
natural action of the mind in acquiring knowledge for 
itself are condemned by the theory of Education, and in 
this predicament is cramming, which consists in forcing 
into the mind of the learner the products of other peo- 
ple's thought. Such products are formulae, rules, general 
abstract propositions, definitions, classifications, tech- 
nical terms, common words even, when they are not the 
signs of ideas gained at first-hand by his own observa- 
tion and perception. The Science of Education recog- 
nizes all these kinds of knowledge as necessary to the 
formation of the mind; but relegates them to their 
proper place in the course of instruction, and determines 
that that place is subsequent not antecedent to the 
action of the learnei-'s tnind on the facts which serve as 
their groundwork. Facts, then, things, material ob- 
jects, natural phenomena; physical facts, facts of lan- 
guage, facts of nature, are the true, the all-sufficient 
pabulum for the youthful mind, and the careful study 
and investigation of them at first-hand, through his own 
observation and experiment are to constitute his earliest 
initiation in the art of learning. After this initiatory 
practice, which involves analysis and disintegration, 
come, as the natural sequence, the processes of recon- 
struction and classification of the elements obtained, 



METHCD OF THE TRUE TEACHER. 205 

induction, framing of definitions, building up of rules, 
generalization of particulars, construction of formulae, 
application of technical terras, in all which processes the 
art of the teacher as a director of the learner's intellect- 
ual efforts is manifestly called into exercise; and the 
need of his own experimental knowledge of the pro- 
cesses he has to direct is too obvious to require to be 
insisted on. 

The comprehensive principle here enunciated, which 
regards even the learning by rote of the multiplication 
table and Latin declensions, antecedently to some pre- 
liminary dealing with the facts of Latin and the facts of 
number, as of the essence of cramming, will be theoreti- 
cally received or rejected by teachers, just in propor- 
tion as they receive or reject the conception of an art of 
teaching founded on intellectual principles. It is ob- 
vious enough that cramming knowledge into the memory 
without regard to its fitness for mental digestion, if an 
art at all, is an art of a very low order, and has little in 
common with that which consists in a conscious appre- 
ciation of the means whereby the mind is awakened to 
activity, and its energies trained to independent power. 
The teacher, in fact, in the one case is an artist, scien- 
tifically working out his design in accordance with the 
principles of his art, and ready to apply all its resources 
to the emergencies of practice; in the other case, he is 
an artisan empirically working by rule-of-thumb, un- 
furnished with principles of action, and succeeding, 
when he succeeds at all, through the happy accident 
that the pupil's own intellectual activity practically de- 
feats the natural tendency of the teacher's mechanical 
drill. 



206 IMPORTANCE OP TRAINING. 

I do not, however, by any means pretend to assert that 
every teacher who declines to accept t>' notion of 
teaching as an art, is an artisan. It often happens that 
a man works on a theory which he does not consciously 
appreciate, and in his actual practice obviates the ob- 
jection which might be taken against some of his pro- 
cesses. Hence we find teachers, while denouncing such 
expressions as " development and cultivation of the in- 
telligence " as "frothy,"* doing practically all they can 
to develop and cultivate the intelligence of their pupils. 
Such teachers do indeed violently drive " the goat " 
into the stomach of their pupils, but when they have 
got it there take great pains to have it digested in some 
fashion or other. I believe that the process would be 
much facilitated by their knowing something of the 
physiology of digestion, but I do not therefore designate 
such practitioners as artisans. At the same time I do 
not call them artists, for their procedure violates nature, 
and true art never does that. The epithet artisan may 
however be restricted to those — and their number is 
legion — whose practice consists of cramming pur et 
simple. 

On the whole, then, I contend that if we could ex- 
amine the entire practice of those teachers who actually 
succeed in endowing the large majority — not a select 
few — of their pupils with sound and systematic knowl- 
edge, and with well-informed minds, we should find 
that, whatever be their theoretic notions, they have 
worked on the principles on which I have been all along 

* See a letter in the "Educational Times," for December, 1872, from 
the Rev. E. Boclen, Head Master of the Clitheroe Royal Grammar 
School. 



ARTISTS AND ARTISANS. 20 7 

insisting. They have succeeded by the development 
andcultiva^' ^ of the intelligence of their pupils, and 
by nothing else, and they have succeeded just in pro- 
portion as they have consciously kept this object in 
view. Let us hear what Dean Stanley tells us of Arnold's 
teaching. "Arnold's whole method was founded on the 
principle of awakening the intelligence of every indi- 
vidual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach, not, as 
you perceive, by downpouring, but by questioning. As 
a general rule he never gave information except as a 
reward for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, 
or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a 
sense that those whom he was addressing had not suf- 
ficient interest or sympathy to entitle them to receive 
it. His explanations were as short as possible, enough 
to dispose of the difficulty and no more, and his ques- 
tions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to 
the real point of every subject, to disclose to them the 
exact boundaries of what they knew and did not know, 
and to cultivate a habit not only of collecting facts, but 
of expressing themselves with facility, and of under- 
standing the principles on which these facts rested." 
Such was Arnold's method of teaching; and it is obvious 
that, mutatis mutandis^ modified somewhat so as to apply 
to the earliest elementary instruction, it involves all the 
principles which I have contended for, as constituting 
the true art of teaching. The boys were, in fact, teach- 
ing themselves under the direction of the teacher with- 
out, or with the slightest, explanation on his part. They 
were using all their minds on the subject, and gaining in- 
dependent power. Arnold, to use a famous French teach- 
er's expression, was "laboring to render himself useless," 



208 IMPORTANCE OP TRAINING. 

But I must draw these remarks to a conclusion. It is 
hardly necessary for me to state formally the principif's 
for which I have been all along arguing. 

The upshot is this — Teaching is not a blind routine 
but an art, which has a definite end in view. An art 
implies an artist who works by systematic rules. The 
processes and rules of art explicitly or implicitly evolve 
the principles involved in science.' The art or practice 
of education, therefore, is founded on the science or 
theory of education, while the science of education is 
itself founded on the science of mind or psychology. 
The complete equipment and training of the teacher for 
his profession comprehends therefore: — 

(a) A knowledge of the subject of instruction. 

(b) A knowledge of the nature of the being to be in- 
structed. 

(c) A knowledge of the best methods of instruction. 

This knowledge gained by careful study and con- 
joined with practice, constitutes the training of the 
teacher. 



IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING OF TEACHERS- 
ANALYSIS, 



I. Teaching is not as yet a " Profession. "... .189 

1. No positive attainments demanded 189 

3. No training , 190 

3. No authoritative credentials 190 

II. Results of Us Non-Professional character. 

1. Sought by the incompetent as a "genteel" avocation. 190 

{a) Impossible in medicine, law, etc 191 

3. Even the naturally gifted would profit by training.. 192 

3. To teach without training is quackery. 193 

III. Arguments urged against Training 193 

1. That it is unnecessary for primary teaching. 193 

(a) But it is necessary in every department 193 

(6) And even more important in the first stages 194 

a Good teaching involves mental training 194 

(i It imparts pleasure to learning 195 

(c) The most learned teachers put into this depart- 
ment .-196 

{d) The child's education not begun at school 196 

a Nature's teaching to be understood and followed. 197 

ft Children often dull from lack of this 197 

3. That " Inward Impulse" is warrant to teach 197 

(a) Parents not competent to judge teachers 198 

(6) Damage to children during the experiment 198 

(c) Applicable to no other skilled occupation. 198 

3. That he who knows can teach 199 

{a) The problem is to get the pupil to learn 199 

oc To have learned is to have gone through the 

process .- -199 

H 209 



210 IMPORTANCE OF TRAI:NING. 

/i But this must have been conscious to be 

helpful - 200 

y Teaching has its own laws 200 

(6) Knowledge may impede teaching by its extent.. .200 

a Teacher on the heights, pupils in the plain .200 

ft Teacher has forgotten how hard it is to learn.. .200 
IV. Teaching as it is, and as it should he.. 201 

1, Teaching contrasted with cramming 201 

{a) The boa and the undigested goat 202 

{b) How the true teacher proceeds 203 

a He forms a just conception of education 203 

ft He studies the proper means to be employed 203 

y He tests his science by psychology 204 

(c) Distinction between artist and artisan 205 

a Not all untrained teachers artisans 206 

ft But all crammers eminently so 206 

2. All good teachers have worked on these principles. .207 
{a) Thomas Arnold's teaching 207 

V. Concluding Summary. 

The training of the teacher includes : 

1. Knowledge of the subject .208 

2. Knowledge of the pupil 208 

3. Knowledge of the best methods. 208 



THE TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE- 
TEACHING.* 



It is almost a truism to say, that the foundation of a 
building is its most important feature. If the founda- 
tion be either insecure in itself, or laid without regard 
to the plan of the superstructure, tbe building as a 
whole will be found wanting both in unity and strength. 
A building is in fact the embodiment and realization of 
an idea conceived in the mind of the architect, and if he 
is competent for his post, and can secure the needful 
co-operation, the practical expression will symmetrically 
correspond to the conception. But unless the founda- 
tion is solidly laid, and all the parts of the building are 
constructed with relation to it, his aesthetic and theoretic 
skill will go for little or nothing. His work is doomed 
to failure from the beginning, and the extent of the fail- 
ure will be proportionate to the ambition of the design. 
These remarks are applicable to the art of building gen- 
erally, whether shown in large and imposing structures, 
or in the meanest cottages. In no case can the essential 
elements of unity and strength be dispensed with. 

In these preliminary observations I have foreshadowed 
the subject with which I have to deal — that of Science- 
teaching — whether carried on under the direction of a 
Science and Art Department, or in the smallest class of 
a private school; and my purpose is to ascertain how 

* Delivered at the College of Preceptors, on the 11th Dec, 1872. 

211 



212 TRUE FOUNJ)ATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

far the ideal of theory is realized in the general prac- 
tice. 

Whatever might have been said of the neglect of 
what is called '* science " in former times, we cannot 
make the same complaint now. A ringing chorus of 
voices may be heard vociferously demanding science for 
the children of primary, secondary, and public schools; 
for the Universities; in short, for all classes of society. 
" Science," it is said, " is the grand desideratum of our 
age, the true mark of our civilization. We want sci- 
ence to supply a mental discipline unfurnished by the 
old-established curriculum; we want it as the basis of 
the technical instruction of our workmen." 

In answer to this universal demand we see something 
called Science-teaching finding its way into primary, and 
even into public schools, in spite of the declaration of 
an eminent Head-master, not longer back than 1863, 
that instruction in physical science, in the way in w^hich 
it could be given in Winchester School, was " worth- 
less; " that a "scientific fact was a fact which produced 
nothing in a boy's mind;" and that this kind of instruc- 
tion "gave no power whatever." We further see this 
something, called Science, stimulated by grants and 
prizes, through the vast machinery of the Science and 
Art Department; and lastly we have, at this moment, a 
Royal Commission of eminent scientific men, taking 
evidence and furnishing Reports on " Scientific In- 
struction and theAdvancement of Science." Who, after 
this, will be bold enough to say that Science is not look- 
ing up in the knowledge-market ? 

But amidst all the clamor of voices demanding in- 
struction in Science, we listen in vain for the authorita- 



WHAT IS MEANT BY SCIENCE. 213 

tive voice — the voice of the master artist — which shall 
define for us the aims and ends of Science, and lay down 
the laws of that teaching by which they are to be 
effectively secured. As things go, every teacher is left 
to frame his own theory of Science-teaching, and his 
own empirical method of carrying it out; and the result 
is, to apply our illustration, that the fabric of Science- 
teaching now rising before us rests upon no recognized 
and established foundation, exhibits no principle of har- 
monious design, and that its various stages have scarcely 
any relation to each other, and least of all to any solidly 
compacted ground-plan. 

The first question for consideration is, " What is 
meant by Science ? " The shortest answer that can be 
given is, that " Science is organized knowledge." This 
is, however, too general for our present purpose, which 
is, to deal with Physical Science. In a somewhat de- 
veloped form, then, physical science is an organized 
knowledge of material, concrete, objective facts or phe- 
nomena. The term " organized," it will be seen, is the 
essence of the definition, inasmuch as it connotes or 
implies that certain objective relations subsisting in the 
nature of things, between facts or phenomena, are sub- 
jectively appreciated by the mind — that is, that Science 
differs from mere knowledge by being a knowledge both 
of facts, and of their relations to each other. The mere 
random, haphazard accumulation of facts, then, is not 
Science; but the perception and conception of their 
natural relations to each other, the comprehension of 
these relations under general laws, and the organization 
of facts and laws into one body, the parts of which are 
seen to be subservient to each other, is Science. 



214 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

Peturning to the other factor of the definitioD, 
"Knowledge," we observe that there are two kinds of 
knowledge — what we know through our own experi- 
ence, and what we know through the experience of 
others. Thus, I know by my own know^ledge that I 
have an audience before nie, and I know through the 
knowledge of others that the' ^arth is 25,000 miles in 
circumference. This latter fact, however, I know in a 
sense different from that in which I know the former. 
The one is a part of my experience, of my very being. 
The other I can only be strictly said to know when I 
have, by an effort of the mind, passed through the con- 
nected chain of facts and reasonings on which the 
demonstration is founded. Thus only can it become ray 
knowledge in the true sense of the terra. 

Strictly speaking, then, organized knowledge, or Sci- 
ence, is originally based on unorganized knowledge, and 
is the outcorae of the learner's own observation of facts 
through the exercise of his own senses, and his own re- 
flection upon what he has observed. This knowledge, 
ultimately organized into Science through the operation 
of his mind, he may with just right call his own; and, 
as a learner, he can properly call no other knowledge 
his own. What is reported to us by another is that 
other's, if gained at first-hand by experience; but it 
stands on a different footing from that which we have 
gained by our owai experience. He merely hands it 
over to us; but when we receive it, its condition is 
already changed. It wants the brightness, definiteness, 
and certainty in our eyes, which it had in his; and, 
moreover, it is merely a loan, and not our property. 
The fact, for instance, about the earth's circumference 



WHAT IS MEANT BY SCIENCE. 215 

was to him a living fact; it sprang into being as the 
outcome of experiments and reasonings, with the entire 
chain of which it was seen by him to be intimately — 
indeed indissolubly and orgnnically connected. To us 
it is a dead fact, severed from its connection with the 
body of truth, and, by our hypothesis, having no 
oro-anic relation to the livino truths Ave have gained bv 
our own minds. These are convertible into our Science; 
that is not. What I insist on then is, that the knowl- 
edge from experience — that which is gained by bringing 
our own minds into direct contact with matter — is the 
only knowledge that as novices in science we have to 
do with. The dogmatic knowledge imposed on us by 
authority, though originally gained by the same means, 
is, really, not ours, but another's — is, as far as we are 
concerned, unorganizable; and therefore, thotigh Science 
to its proprietor, is not Science to us. To us it is 
merely information, or haphazard knowledge. 

The conclusions, then, at which we arrive, are — (1) 
That the true foundation of physical Science lies in the 
knowledge of physical facts gained at first-hand by ob- 
servation and experiment, to be made by the learner 
himself; (2) that all knowledge not thus gained is, pro 
tanto, unorcranizable, and not suited to his actual condi- 
tion; and (3) that his facts become organized into 
Science by the operation of his own mind upon them. 

Having given some idea of what is meant by Science, 
and how it grows up in the mind of the learner, I turn 
now to the teacher, and briefly inquire what is his ftmc- 
tion in the process of Science-teaching. 

I have elsewhere* endeavored to expound the correla- 

* See " Theories of Teaching," with the corresponding Practice. 



216 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

tion of learning and teaching, and to show that the nat- 
ural process of investigation by which the unassisted 
student — unassisted, that is by book or teacher, — would 
seek, as a first discoverer, to gain an accurate knowl- 
edge of facts and their interpretation, suggests to us 
both the nature and scope of the teacher's, and espe- 
cially the Science-teacher's, functions. According to this 
view of the subject, the learner's method, and the teach- 
er's, serve as a mutual limit to each other. The learner 
is a discoverer or investigator engaged in interrogating 
the concrete matter before him, with a view to ascertain 
its nature and properties: and the teacher is a superin- 
tendent or director of the learner's process; pointing out 
the problem to be solved, concentrating the learner's 
attention upon it, varying the points of view suggesting 
experiments, inquiring what they result in; converting 
even errors and mistakes into means of increased power, 
bringing back the old to interpret the new, the known 
to interpret the unknown, requiring an exact record of 
results arrived at— in short, exercising all the powers of 
the learner's mind upon the matter in hand, in order to 
make him an accurate observer and experimenter, and 
to train him in the method of investigation. 

The teacher, then, is to be governed in his teaching, 
not by independent notions of his own, but by consid- 
erations inherent in the natural process by which the 
pupil learns. He is not, therefore, at liberty to ignore 
this natural process, which essentially involves the ob- 
servation, experiment, and reflection of the j^upil; nor 
to supersede it by intruding the results of the observa- 
tion, experiment, and reflection of others. He is, on the 
contrary, bound to recognize these operations of his pu- 



iPUNCTION OF THE TEACHER. 217 

pil's miod as the true foundation of the Science-teaching which 
he professes to carry out. In other wortls, the process 
of the learner is the true foundation of that of the 
teacher. 

This sketch would be sufficient were it merely my ob- 
ject to present a theory. But as I am seriously in earn- 
est, and wish to see the claims of Science vindicated, 
and the teaching of its facts, principles, and laws placed 
on a totally different ground from that which it now 
generally occupies, 1 must pursue the subject further. 

It will have been observed, that I lay great stress on 
teaching Science in such a way that it shall become a 
real training of the student in the method of Science, 
with a view to the forming of the scientific mind. Ac- 
cording to the usual methods of science-teaching, it is 
quite possible for a student to "get up," by cramming, 
a number of books on scientific subjects, to attend lect- 
ure after lecture on the same subjects, to be drenched 
with endless explanations and comments on descriptions 
of experiments performed by others, to lodge in his 
memory the technical results of investigations in which 
he has taken no part himself, together with formulae, 
rules, and definitions ad infinitum, and yet, after all, never 
to have even caught a glimpse of the idea involved in 
investigation, or to have been for a moment animated 
by the spirit of the scientific explorer. That spirit is a 
spirit of power, which, not content with the achieve- 
ments gained by others, seeks to make conquests of its 
own, and therefore examines, explores, discovers, and 
invents for itself. These are the manifestations of the 
spirit of investigation, and that spirit may be excited by 
the true Science-teacher in the heart of a little child. I 



2J8 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

may refer, for proof of this assertion, to the teacliing of 
botany to poor village children by the late Professor Hen- 
slow; to the teaching of general Science by the late Dean 
Dawes to a similar class of children; to that pursued at 
the present time at the Bristol Trade School; and to the 
invaluable lessons given to the imaginary Harry and 
Lucy by Miss Edge worth. Without warranting every 
process adoj^ted by these eminently successful teachers, 
some of whom were perhaps a little too much addicted 
to explaining, I have no hestation in declaring that they 
one and all acted mainly on the principle that true 
Science-teaching consists in bringing the pupil's mind 
into direct contact with facts — in getting him to inves- 
tigate, discover, and invent for himself. The same 
method is recommended in Miss Youman's philosophical 
Essay "On the Culture of the Observing powers of chil- 
dren,"* and rigorously applied in her " First Lessons on 
Botany; " and in the Supplement to that little volume f I 
have given, as its editor, a typical lesson on the pile-driv- 
ing engine, which illustrates the following principles: — 

1. That the pupils throughout the lesson, are learning 
— i. e., teaching themselves, by the exercise of their own 
minds, without, and not by, the explanations of the 
teacher. 

2. That the pupils gain their knowledge from the 
object itself, not from a description of the object fur- 
nished by another. 

3. That the observations and experiments are their 
own observations and experiments, made by their own 

* " An Essay on the Culture of the Observing Powers of Children, es- 
pecially in connection with the Study of Botany. By Eliza A. Youmans, 
of New York, with Notes and a Supplement by Joseph Payne." 

t See also page 95 of this volume. 



KNOWLEDGE AT FIRST-HAND. 219 

senses and by their own hands, as investigators seeking 
to ascertain for themselves what the object before them 
is, and what it is capable of doing. 

4. That the teacher recognizes his proper function as 
that of a guide or director of the pupil's process of self- 
teaching, which he aids by moral means, but does not 
supersede by the intervention of his own knowledge. 

These hints all tend to show what is really meant by 
Science-teaching, as generally distinguished from other 
teaching. 

In case, however, my competency to give an opinion 
on Science-teaching should be questioned, I beg to en- 
force my views by the authority of Professor Huxley, 
who, in a lecture on "Scientific Education," thus ex- 
presses himself : — "If scientific training is to yield its 
most eminent results, it must be made practical — that is 
to say, in explaining to a child the general phenomena 
of nature, you must, as far as possible, give reality to 
your teaching by object-lessons. In teaching him bot- 
any, he must handle the plants and dissect the flowers 
for himself; in teaching him physics and chemistry, 
you must not be solicitous to fill him with information, 
but you must be careful that what he learns he knows 
of his own knowledge. Do not be satisfied with telling 
him that a magnet attracts iron. Let him see that it 
does; let him feel the pull of the one upon the other for 
himself. . . . Pursue this discipline carefully and 
conscientiously, and you may make sure that, however 
scanty may be the measure of information which you 
have poured into the boy's mind, you have created an 
intellectual habit of priceless value in practical life." 

Again, in the same lecture, the Professor says, — " If 



220 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE- TEACHING. 

the great benefits of scientific training are sought, it is 
essential that such training should be real — that is to 
say that the mind of the scholar should be brought into 
direct relation with fact; that he should not merely be 
told a thing, but made to see, by the use of his own 
intellect and ability, that the thing is so, and not other- 
wise. The great peculiarity of scientific training — that 
in virtue of which it cannot be replaced by any other 
discipline whatever — is this bringing of the mind directly 
into contact with fact, and practising the mind in the 
completest form of induction — that is to say, in drawing 
conclusions from particular facts made known by imme- 
diate observations of Nature." 

To the same effect another eminent Science-teacher, 
Mr. Wilson, of Kugby School, thus expresses himself. 
*' Theory and experience," he says, "alike convince me 
that the master who is teaching a class quite unfamiliar 
with scientific method, ought to make his class teach 
themselves, by thinking out the subject of the lecture 
with them, taking up their suggestions and illustrations, 
criticising them, hunting them down, and proving a 
suggestion barren or an illustration inapt; starting them 
on a fresh scent when they are at fault, reminding them 
of some familiar fact they had overlooked, and so elicit- 
ing out of the chaos of vague notions that are afloat on 
the matter in hand, be it the laws of motion, the evap- 
oration of water, or the origin of the drift, something of 
order, concatenation, and interest, before the key to the 
mystery is given, even if, at all, it has to be given. 
Training to think, not to be a mechanic or a surveyor, 
must be first and foremost as his object. So valuable 
are the subjects intrinsically, and such excellent models 



OPINIONS OF EMINENT EDUCATORS. 221 

do they provide, that the most stupid and didactic 
teaching will not be useless; but it will not be the same 
source of power that the method of investigation will be 
in the hands of a good master." 

My last quotation will be from the very valuable lect- 
ure given here by Dr. Kenishead, the able Science- 
teacher of Dulwich College, on "The Impoi'tjince of 
Physical Science as a branch of English Gent^ral Educa- 
tion. " Referring lo education generally, he >ays, and 
I entirely agree with him, — *' I wish it particularly to be 
borne in mind that, whenever I use the word education, 
I use it in its highest ahd truest sense of training and 
developing the mind. I hold the acquisition of mere 
useful knowledge, however important and valuable it 
may be, to be entirely secondary and subsidiary. 1 con- 
sider it to be of more value to teach the young mind 
to think out one original problem, to draw one correct 
conclusion for itself, than to have acquired the whole of 
' Mangnall's Questions ' or ' Brewer's Guide to Science.' " 
There speaks the true teacher. But what does he say 
on Science-teaching? This: — "I wish particularly to 
draw the distinction between mere scientific knowledge 
and scientific training. I do not believe in the former; 
I do believe in the latter. In physical and experimental 
science, studied for the sake of training, the mode of 
teaching is everything. I know of one school [we shall 
soon see that there are many such] in which physical 
science is made a strong point in the prospectus, where 
chemistry is taught by reading a text-book (a very anti- 
quated one, since it only gives forty-five elements), but 
in which the experiments are learnt by heart, and never 
seen practically. Such a proceeding is a mere farce on 



222 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

Science." But Dr. Kemshead proceeds, — " Of course, 
as mere useful knowledge, Lardner's hand-books, or any 
other good text-books, might be committed to memory. 
So long as the facts are correct, and are put in a manner 
that the pupil can receive them, the end is gained; but 
this is not scientific teaching — cramming if you like, but 
not teaching. It will I am sure, be manifest to you all 
that there is nothing of scientific training in this. To 
develop scientific habits of thought — the scientific mind, 
the teaching must be of a totally different nature. In 
order to get the fullest benefit from a scientific educa- 
tion, the teacher should endeavor to bring his pupil face 
to face with the great problems of Nature, as though 
he were the first discoverer. He should encourage him 
from the first to record accurately all his experiments, 
the object he had in view in making theoi, the results 
even when they have failed, and the inferences which he 
draws in each case, with as much rigor and exactitude 
as though they were to be published in the 'Philosophi- 
cal Transactions.' He should, in fact, teach his pupil to 
face the great problems of Nature as though they had 
never been solved before." 

"To face the great problems of nature as though they 
had never been solved before " — " to bring the child 
face to face with the great problems of Nature, as 
though he were the first discoverer " — these weighty, 
pregnant, and luminous expressions contain the essence 
of the whole question I have endeavored to set before 
you. They define, as you easily perceive, the attitude 
of the pupil in regard to his subjective process of learn- 
ing — the one being the counterpart of the other. 

It will have been noticed, perhaps, that nothing has 



THE PKOVINCE OF TEXT-BOOKS. 223 

been said of text-books, which some consider as " the 
true foundation of Science-teaching." The reason of 
this omission lies in the nature of things. The books of 
a true student of physical Science are the associated 
facts and phenomena of iSTature. He finds them in " the 
running brooks," the mountains, trees, and rocks; where- 
ever, in short, he is brought face to face with facts and 
phenomena; these are the pages, whose sentences, phras- 
es, words, and letters he is to decipher and interpret by 
his own investigation. The intervention of a text-book, 
so-called, between the student and the matter he is to 
study, is an impertinence. For what is such a text-book ? 
A compendium of observations and experiments made 
by others in view of that very nature-book which, by the 
hypothesis, he is to study at first hand for himself, and 
of definitions, rules, generalizations, and classifications 
which he is, through the active powers of his mind, to 
make for himself. The student's own method of study 
is the true method of Science. He is being gradually 
initiated in the processes by which both knowledge, 
truly his own, and the power of gaining more, are se- 
cured. Why should we supersede and neutralize his en- 
ergies, and altogethei: disorganize his plan by requiring 
him to receive on authority the results of other people's 
labors in the same field ? Again, a text-book on Science 
is a logically constructed treatise, in which the proposi- 
tions last arrived at by the author are presented first — 
in the reverse order to that followed by the method of 
Science. The sufficient test of the use of books in Sci- 
ence-teaching, is, in fact, this: Do they train the mind 
to scientific method ? If they do not — if on the con- 
trary, they discountenance that method, — then they are 



224 TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING. 

to be rejected in that elementary work — the foundation of 
Science-teaching — with which alone we are here con- 
cerned. Once raore, I appeal to Prof. Huxley, who tells 
lis that, *' If Scientific education is to be dealt with as 
mere book-work, it will be better not to attempt it, but to 
stick to the Latin Grammar, which makes no pretense to 
be anything but book-work." Again in his Lecture to 
Teachers, — "But let me entreat you to remember my 
last words. Mere book learning in physical Science is a 
sham and a delusion. What you teach, unless you wish 
to be impostors, that you must first know; and real 
knowledge in Science means personal acquaintance with 
the facts, be they few or many ? " But I must add to 
these authoritative words those of Dr. Acland, who, when 
asked by the Public Schools Commission his opinion of 
the Lond<»n University Examinations in Physical Science, 
thus replied: — "I may say, generally, that I should val- 
ue all knowledge of these physical sciences very little 
indeed unless it was otherwise than book-work If it is 
merely a question of getting up certain books, and be- 
ing able to answer certain book questions that is merely 
an exercise of the memory of a very useless kind. The 
great object, though not the sole object, of this training 
should be to get the boys to observe and understand the 
action of matter in some department or another . . . 
I want them to see and know the things, and in that 
way they will evoke many qualities of the mind, which 
the study of these subjects is intended to develop." (vol. 
iv. p. 407). These words sufficiently show both what 
the true foundation is, and what it is not. Once more — 
for the importance of this matter can hardly be too much 
insisted on— hear what Prof. Huxley says, in his evi- 



THE PROVINCE OF TEXT-BOOKS. 225 

dence before the Commission on Scientific Instruction 
(p. 23): — "The great blunder that our people make, I 
think, is attempting to teach from books; our school- 
masters have largely been taught from books and noth- 
ing but books, and a great many of them understand 
nothing but book teaching, as far as I can see. The 
consequence is, that when they attempt to deal with 
Scientific teaching, they make nothing of it. If you are 
setting to work to teach a child Science, you must teach 
it through its eyes, and its hands, and its senses." 

I do not for a moment deny that much is to be gained 
from the study of scientific text-books. It would be 
absurd to do so. What I do «leny is that the reading up 
of books on Science — which is, strictly speaking, a literary 
study — either is, or can possibly be, a training in scien- 
tific method. To receive facts in Science on any other 
authority than that of the facts themselves; to get up 
the observations, experiments and comments of others, 
instead ol observing, experimenting, and commenting 
ourselves; to learn definititions, rules, abstract proposi- 
tions, technicalities, before we personally deal with the 
facts which lead up to them; all this, whether in literary 
or scientific education — and especially in the latter — is 
of the essence of cramming, and is therefore entirely 
opposed to, and destructive of, true mental training and 
discipline. 



TRUE FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE-TEACHING - 
ANALYSIS. 



I, Modern demand for Science- Teacldng .212 

1. Rests upon no solid foundation ..211, 213 

II. What is meant by Science f 213 

1, Organized knowledge of concrete facts 213 

{a) Not only of facts, but of their relations ..213 

{b) Knowledge by experience vs. that by report 214 

(c) Novices have to do only with experience ..215 

[d) Science vs. information 215 

2. Hence these conclusions : 

(a) The foundation lies in knowledge at first hand.. .215 

{b) All other knowledge unorganizable .215 

(c) These facts are organized by mental action 215 

III. Function of the Teacher in Science-Teaching .216 

1. The learner's and the teacher's methods limit each 

other.. 216 

{a) The teacher to be governed by the pupil's 

methods _ 217 

IV. The PupiVs mind to be brought into contact with Facts 217 

1. Facts may be crammed without a glimpse of the 

idea ..217 

2. Even little children may have spirit of investigation. 218 
{a) Proved by Prof. Henslow, Miss Edgeworth, etc. 218 

3. Illustrated by lesson on pile-driver 219 

{a) Pupils learn without explanations.. 219 

ip) They gain their knowledge from the object itself .219 

(c) They are personal investigators 219 

{d) The teacher is the guide and director 219 

4. Confirmed by eminent educators 219 

{a) Prof. Huxley 219 

226 



ANALYSIS. 227 

(b) Mr. Wilson of Rugby School 220 

(c) Dr. Kemshead, of Dulwich College 221 

. The true text-books are the facts of nature 223 

(a) Intervention of a book an impertinence 223 

(b) Its method the opposite of investigation 223 

(c) Book-learning in science a sham and delusion 224 

(d) Opinions of eminent educators 224 

{e) Reading text-books literary, not scientific -225 



PESTALOZZI; 

THE INFLUENCE OF HIS PKINCIPLES AND PRACTICE ON 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.* 



Familiar as Pestalozzi's name is to our ears, it will 
hardly be pretended that he himself is well known 
amongst us. His life and personal character — the work 
he did himself, and that which he influenced others to 
do — his successess and failures as a teacher, form alto- 
gether a large subject, which requires, to do it justice, a 
thoughtful and lengthened study. Parts of the subject 
have been from time to time brought very prominently 
before the public, but often in such a way as to throw 
the rest into shadow, and hinder the appreciation of it 
as a whole. Though this has been done without any 
hostile intention, the general effect has been in England 
to misrepresent, and therefore to under-estimate, a very 
remarkable man — a man whose principles, slowly but 
surely operating on the public opinion of Germany, have 
sufficed, to use his own pithy expression, "to turn right 
round the car of Education, and set it in a new direc- 
tion." 

One of the aspects in which he has been brought be- 
fore us — and it deserves every consideration— is that of 
an earnest, self-sacrificing, enthusiastic philanthropist, 
endowed with what Kichter calls " an almighty love,'' 

* A lecture delivered at the College of Preceptors, on theSOtli Feb., 
1875. 

228 



PARTIAL VIEWS OF HIS CHARACTER. 229 

whose first and last thought was how he might raise the 
debased and suffering among his countrymen to a higher 
level of happiness and knowledge, by bestowing upon 
them the blessings of education. It is right that he 
should be thus exhibited to the world, for never did any 
man better deserve to be enrolled in the noble army of 
martyrs who have died that others might live, than Pes- 
talozzi. To call him the Howard of educational philan. 
thropists, is only doing scant justice to his devoted char- 
acter, and under-estimates, rather than over-estimates, 
the man. 

Another aspect in which Pestalozzi is sometimes pre- 
sented to us, is that of an unhandy, unpractical, dreamy 
theorist; whose views were ever extending beyond the 
compass of his control; who, like the djinn of the East- 
ern story, called into being forces which mastered in- 
stead of obeying him; whose *' unrivalled incapacity for 
governing" (this is his own confession) made him the 
victim of circumstances; who was utterly wanting in 
worldly wisdom; who, knowing man, did not know men; 
and who, therefore, is to be set down as one who prom- 
ised mu(;h more than he performed. It is impossible to 
deny that there is substantial truth in such a representa- 
tion; but this only increases the wonder that, in spite of 
his disqualifications, he accomplished so much. It is 
still true that his awakening voice, calling for reform in 
education, was responded to by hundreds of earnest and 
intelligent men, who placed themselves under his ban- 
ner, and were proud to follow whither the Luther of 
educational reform wished to lead them. 

A third view of Pestalozzi presents him to us as 
merely interested about elementary education — and this 



230 PESTALOZZI. 

appears to many who are engaged in teaching what are 
called higher subjects, a matter in which they have little 
or no concern. Those, however, who thus look down on 
Pestalozzi's work, only show, by their indifference, a 
profound want, both of self-knowledge, and of a knowl- 
edge of his principles and purpose. Elementary educa- 
tion, in the sense in which Pestalozzi understands it, is, 
or ought to be, the concern of every teacher, whatever 
be his especial subject, and whatever the age of his pu- 
pils; and when he sees that elementary education is 
only another expression for the forming of the character 
and mind of the child, he must acknowledge that this 
object comes properly within the sphere of his labors, 
and deserves, on every ground, his thoughtful atten- 
tion. 

In spite, then, of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications 
in many respects for the task he undertook; in spite of 
his ignorance of even common subjects (for he spoke, 
read, wrote, and ciphered badly, and knew next to 
nothing of classics or science); in spite of his want of 
worldly wisdom, of any comprehensive and exact knowl- 
edge of men and of things; in spite of his being merely 
an elementary teacher, — through the force of his all- 
conquering love, the nobility of his heart, the resistless 
energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a few first 
principles, his eloquent exposition of them in words, 
his resolute manifestation of them in deeds, — he stands 
forth among educational reformers as the man whose 
influence on education is wider, deeper, more penetrat- 
ing, than that of all the rest — the prophet and the sov- 
ereign of the domain in which he lived and labored. 

The fact that, with such disqualifications and draw- 



HIS PERSONAL DISADVANTAGES. 2Sl 

backs, he has attained such a position, supersedes any 
argument for our giving earnest heed to what he wag 
and what he did. It is a fact pregnant in suggestions, 
and to the consideration of them this Lecture is to be 
devoted. 

It was late in life — he was fifiy-two years of age — 
before Pestalozzi became a practical schoolmaster. He 
had even begun to despair of ever finding the career in 
which he might attempt to realize the theories over 
which his loving heart and teeming brain had been 
brooding from his earliest youth. He feared that he 
should die, wnthout reducing the ideal of his thought to 
the real of action.* 

Besides the advanced ao;e at which Pestalozzi began 
his work, there was another disability in his case to 
which I have not referred. This was, that not only had 
he had no experience of school w^ork, but he knew no emi- 
nent teacher whose example might have stimulated him 
10 imitation; and he was entirely ignorant (with one 
notable exception) of all writings on the theory and 
practice of education. The exception I refer to is the 
Emile of Rousseau, a remarkably suggestive book, which 
made, as was to be expected, a strong impression on his 
mind. We know from his own account, that he had 
already endeavored, with indifferent success, to make 
his own son another Emile. The diary in which he has 



* See the {Kirticulars of Pestalozzi's life, in Mr. Quick's admirable Essays 
on Educational Reformers ; in Pe-^tal-zzi, edited for tlie Home and Colo- 
nial Society, by Mr. Diuininji:, in Von Raumer's History of Education ; in 
Roger de Guinips' Histoire cJe Pestalozzi, de sa Pensee, et de son Qi^uvre, 
Lausanne, 1874; in the irfe and work of Pestalozzi, by Hermann Kriisi, 
New York, 1875; and in various treatises by Mr. Henry Barnard, formerly 
Commissioner of Education, Washington. 



23^ PESTALOZZi. 

recorclecl day by day the particulars of his experiment is 
extremely interesting and instructive. 

At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pestalozzi 
utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of 
education, and very scantily furnished even with ele- 
mentary knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton 
of Unterwalden, the charge of eighty children, whom 
the events of war had rendered homeless and destitute. 
Here he was at last in the j^osition which, during years 
of sorrow and disappointment, he had eagerly desired to 
fill. He was now brought into immediate contact with 
ignorance, vice, and brutality, and had the opportunity 
for testing the power of his long-cherished theories. 
The man whose absorbing idea had been that the 
ennobling of the people, even of the lowest class, 
through education, was no mere dream, was now, in the 
midst of extraordinary difficulties, to struggle with the 
solution of the problem. And surely if any man con- 
sciously possessing strength to fight, and only desi]"ing 
to be brought face to face with his adversary, ever liad 
his utmost wishes granted, it was Pestalozzi at Stanz. 
Let us try for a moment to realize the circumstances — 
the forces of the enemy on the one side, the single arm 
on the other, and the field of the combat. The house in 
wl)ich the eighty children were assembled, to be boarded, 
lodged, and taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline 
convent, scarcely habitable, and destitute of all the con- 
veniences of life. The only apartment suitable for a 
schoolroom was about twenty-four feet square, furnished 
with a few desks and forms; and into this weie crowded 
the wretched children, noisy, dirty, diseased, and igno- 
rant, with the manners and habits of barbarians. Pes- 



HIS WOEK AT STANZ. 233 

talozzi's only helper in the management of the institu- 
tion was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept 
the rooms; so that he was, as he tells ns himself, not 
only the teacher, but the paymaster, the man-servant, 
and almost the house-maid of the children. 

Here, then, we see Pestalozzi surrounded by a " sea 
of troubles," against which he had not only " to take 
arms," but to forge the arms himself. And what was 
the single weapon on which he relied for conquest ? 
It was his own loving heart. Hear his words: — "My 
wishes were now accomplished. 1 felt convinced that 
my heart would change the condition of my children as 
speedily as the springtide sun reanimates the earth 
frozen by the winter." "Nor," he adds, " was I mis- 
taken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow 
from our mountains, you could no longer recognize the 
same children." 

But how was this wondeful transformation effected? 
What do Pestalozzi's words really mean ? Let us pause 
for a moment to consider them. Here is a man who, in 
presence of ignorance, obstinacy, dirt, brutality, and 
vice — enemies that will destroy him unless he can des- 
troy them — opposes to them the unresistible might of 
w^eakness, or what appears such, and lights them with 
his heart! 

Let all teachers ponder over the fact, and remember 
that this weapon, too frequently forgotten, and there- 
fore unf orged in our training colleges, is an indispensible 
requisite to their equipment. Wanting this, all the para- 
phernalia of literary certiiicates — even the diplomas of 
the College of Preceptors — will be unavailing. With it, 
the teacher, poorly furnished in other respects (think of 



234 PESTALOZZI. 

Pestalozzi's literary qualifications ! ), may work wonders, 
compared with which the so-called magician's are mere 
child's play. The first lesson, then, that we learn from 
Pestalozzi is, that the teacher must have a heart — an ap- 
parently simple but really profound discovery, to which 
we cannot attach too ranch importance. 

But Pestalozzi's own heart was not merely a statical 
heart — a heart furnished with capabilities for action, but 
not acting; it was a dynamical heart — a heart which was 
constantly at work, and vitalized the system. Let us 
see how it worked. 

" I was obliged," he says, " unceasingly to be every- 
thing to my children. I was alone with them from morn- 
ing to night. It was from my hand that they received 
whatever could be of service both to their bodies and 
minds. All succor, all consolation, all instruction came to 
them immediately from myself. Their hands were in my 
hand; my eyes were fixed on theirs, my tears mingled 
with theirs, my smiles encountered theirs, my soup was 
their soup, my drink was their drink. I had around me 
neither family, friends, nor servants; I had only them. I 
was with them when they were in health, by their side 
when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the last 
to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we 
were in bed, I used to pray with them and talk to them 
till they went to sleep. They wished me to do so." 

This active, practical, self sacrificing love, beaming 
on the frozen hearts of the children, by degrees melted 
and animated them. But it was only by degrees. " Pes- 
talozzi was at first disappointed. He had expected too 
much, and had formed no plan of action. He even rath- 
er prided himself upon his want of plan. 



HIS THEORY OF MORAL EDUCATION. 235 

"I knew," be says, "no system, no method, no art 
but that which rested on the simple consequences of the 
firm belief of the children in my love towards them. I 
wished to know no other." 

Before long, however, he began to see that the re- 
sponse which the movement of bis heart towards theirs 
called forth was rather a response of his personal efforts, 
than one dictated by their own will and conscience. It 
excited action, but not spontaneous, independent action. 
This did not satisfy him. He wished to make them act 
from strictly moral motives. 

Gradually, then, Pestalozzi advanced to the main 
principles of his system of moral education — that virtue, 
to be worth anything, must be practical; that it must 
consist not merely in knowing what is right, but in do- 
ing it; that even knowing wbat is right does not come 
from the exposition of dogmatic precepts, but from the 
convictions of the conscience; and that, therefore, both 
knowing and doing rest ultimately on tbe enlightenment 
of the conscience through the exercise of the intellect. 

He endeavored, in the first place, to awaken the moral 
sense — to make the children conscious of their moral 
powers, and to accomplish his object, not by preaching 
to them, though he sometimes did this, but by calling 
these powers into exercise. He gave them, as he tells 
us, few explanations. He taught them dogmatically 
neither morality nor religion. He wished them to be 
both moral aad religious; but he conceived that it was 
not possible to make them so by verbal precept, by word 
of command, nor by forcing them to commit to memory 
formularies which did not represent their own convic- 
tions. He did not wish them to say they believed, be- 



236 PESTALOZZI. 

fore they believed. He appealed to wlmt was divine in 
their hearts, implanted there by the Supreme Creator; 
and having brought it out into consciousness, called on 
them to exhibit it in action. " When," he says, " the 
children were perfectly still, so that you might hear a 
pin drop, I said to them, ' Don't you feel yourselves 
more reasonable and more happy now than when you are 
making a disorderly noise ?" When they clung round 
my neck and called me their father, I would say, ' Chil- 
dren, could you deceive your father ? Could you, after 
embracing me thus, do behind my back what you know 
I disapprove of ? ' And when we were speaking about 
the misery of our country, and they felt the happiness 
of their own lot, I used to say, * How good God is, to 
make the heart of man pitiful and compassionate.' " At 
other times, after telling them of the desolation of some 
family in the neighborhood, he would ask them whether 
they were willing to sacrifice a portion of their own 
food to feed the starving children of that family ? 

These instances will suffice to show generally what 
Pestalozzi meant by moral education, and how he oper- 
ated on the hearts and consciences of the children. We 
see that, instead of feeding their imagination with pict- 
ures of virtue beyond and above their sphere, he called 
on them to exercise those within their reach. He knew 
what their ordinary family life had been, and he wished 
to prepare them for something better and nobler; but 
he felt that this could only be accomplished by making 
them, while members of his family, consciously appre- 
ciate what was right and desire to do it. 

Here then, in moral and, as we shall presently see, in 
intellectual education, Pestalozzi proceeded from the 



FROM THE CONCRETE TO THE ABSTRACT. 237 

near, the practical, the actual — to the remote, the ab- 
stract, the ideal. It was on the foundation of what the 
children were, and could become, in the sphere they 
occupied, that he built up their moral education. 

But he conceived — and, I think, justly — that their 
intellectual training was to he looked on as part of their 
moral training. Whatever increases our knowledge of 
things as they are, leads to the appreciation of the 
truth; for truth, in the widest sense of the^icrm, is this 
knowledge. But the acquisition of knowledge, as re- 
quiring mental effort, and therefore exercising the active 
powers, necessarily increases the capacity to form judg- 
ments on moral questions; so, that, in proportion as you 
cultivate the will, the affections, and the conscience, 
with a view to independent action, you must cultivate 
the intellect, which is to impose the proper limits on that 
independence; and on the other hand, in proportion as 
you cultivate the intellect, you must train the moral 
powers which are to carry its decisions into effect. 
Moral and intellectual education must consequently, in 
the formation of the human being, proceed together, 
the one stimulating and maintaining the action of the 
other. Pestalozzi, therefore, instructed as well as edu- 
cated; and indeed educated by means of instruction. 
In carrying out this object, he adopted the general prin- 
ciple I before stated. He proceeded from the near, the 
practical, the actual, to the remote, the abstract, and 
the ideal. 

We shall see his theoretical views on this point in a 
few quotations from a work which he wrote some years 
before, entitled " The Evening Hour of a Hermit.'^'' He 
says: — 



238 PESTALOZZI. 

"Nature develops all the human faculties by practice, and 
their growth depends on their exercise." 

"The circle of knowledge commences close around a man, 
and thence extends concentrically." 

"Force not the faculties of children into the remote paths of 
knowledge, until they have gained strength by exercise on things 
that are near them. " 

" There is in Nature an order and march of development. If 
you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the peace and harmony 
of the mind. And this you do, if, before you have formed the 
mind by thejpl-ogressive knowledge of the realities of life, you 
filing it into tne labyrinth of words, and make them the basis of 
development." 

" The artificial march of the ordinary school, anticipating the 
order of Nature, which proceeds without anxiety and without 
haste, inverts this order by placing words first, and thus secures 
a deceitful appearance of success at the expense of natural and 
safe development." 

In these few sentences we recognize all that is most 
characteristic in the educational principles of Pesta- 
lozzi. 

I will put them into another form: — 

(1) There is a natural order in which the powers of 
the human being develop or unfold themselves. 

(2) We must study and understand this order of Na- 
ture, if we would aid, and not disturb, the develop- 
ment. 

(3) We aid the development, and consequently pro- 
mote the growth of the faculties concerned in it, when 
we call them into exercise. 

(4) Nature exercises the faculties of children on the 
realities of life — on the near, the present, the actual. 

(5) If we would promote that exercise of the faculties 
which constitutes development and ends in growth, we 



SOUND PRINCIPLES, IMPERFECT APPLICATION. 239 

also, as teachers, must, in the case of children, direct 
them to the realities of life — to the things which come in 
contact with them, which concern their immediate in- 
terests, feelings, and thoughts. 

(6) Within this area of personal experience we must 
confine them, until, by assiduous, practical exercise in it, 
their powers are strengthened, and they are prepared to 
advance to the next concentric circle, and then to the 
next, and so on, in unbroken succession. ^ 

(7) In the order of Nature, things go before words, 
the realities before the symbols, the substance before 
shadow. We cannot, without disturbing the harmonious 
order of the development, invert this order. If we do 
so, we take the traveller out of the open sunlit high-road, 
and plunge him into an obscure labyrinth, where he gets 
entangled and bewildered, and loses his way. 

These are the fundamental principles of Pestalozzi's 
theory of intellectual as well as moral education, and I 
need hardly say that they resolve themselves into the 
principles of human nature. 

But we next inquire, How did he apply them ? What 
was his method ? These questions are somewhat em- 
barrassing, and, if strictly pressed, must be answered by 
saying that he often applied them very imperfectly and 
inconsistently, and that his method for the most part 
consisted in having none at all. The fact is, that the 
unrivalled incapacity for governing men and external 
things, to which he confessed, extended itself also to the 
inner region of his understanding. He could no more 
govern his conceptions than the circumstances around 
him. The resulting action, then, was wanting in order 
and proportion. It was the action of a man set upon 



240 PESTAXOZZI. 

bringing out the powers of those he influenced, but ap- 
parently almost indifferent to what became of the 
results. His notion of education as development was 
clear, but he scarcely conceived of it as also training 
and discipline. Provided that he could secure a vivid 
interest in his lesson, and see the response to his efforts 
in the kindling eyes and animated countenances of his 
pupils, he was satisfied. He took it for granted that 
what was so eagerly received would be certainly re- 
tained, and therefore never thought of repeating the 
lesson, nor of examining the product. He was so earn- 
estly intent upon going ahead, that he scarcely looked 
back to see who were following; and to his enormous 
zeal for the good of the whole, often sacrificed the inter- 
ests of individuals. This zeal was without discretion. 
He forgot what he might have learned from Rousseau^ 
that a teacher who is master of his art frequently ad- 
vances most surely by standing stilJ, and does most by 
doing nothing. In the matter of words, moreover, his 
practice was often directly opposed to his principles. 
He would give lists of words to be repeated after him, 
or learnt by heart, which represented nothing real in the 
experience of the pupils. In various other ways he 
manifested a strange inconsistency. 

Yet, in spite of these drawbacks, if we look upon the 
teacher as a man whose especial function it is, to use an 
illustration from Socrates, to be, as it were, the ac- 
coucheur of the mind, to bring it out into the sunlight 
of life, to rouse its dormant powers, and make it con- 
scious of their possession, we must assign to Pestalozzi 
a very high rank among teachers. 

It was this remarkable instinct for developing the fac- 



A CARDINAL PEINCIPLE. 241 

ulties of bis pupils that formed his main characteristic 
as a teacher. Herein lay his great strength. To set the 
intellectual machinery in motion — to make it work, and 
keep it working; that was the sole object at which he 
aimed: of all the rest he took little account. If he had 
any method, this was its most important element. But, 
in carrying it out, he relied upon a principle which must 
be insisted on as cardinal and essential in education. Se 
secured the thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly 
through their own direct share in it. By his influence up- 
on them he got them to concentrate all their powers upon 
it; and this concentration, involving self-exercise, in turn, 
by reaction, augmented the interest; and the result was 
an inseparable association of the act of learning with 
pleasure in learning. Whatever else, then, Pestalozzi's 
teaching lacked, it was intensely interesting to the chil- 
dren, and made them love learning. 

Consistently with the principles quoted from the 
" Evening Hours of a Hermit,'''' and with the practice just 
described, we see that Pestalozzi's conception of the 
teacher's function made it consist pre-eminently in rous- 
ing the pupil's native energies, and bringing about their 
self-development. This self-development is the conse- 
quence of the self -activity of the pupil's own mind — of 
the experience Avhich his mind goes through in dealing 
with the matter to be learned. This experience must be 
his own; by no other experience than his own can he be 
educated at all. The education, therefore, that he gains 
is self-education; and the teacher is constituted as the 
stimulator and director of the intellectual processes hy which the 
learner educates himself. This I hold to be the central 
principle of all education — of all teaching; and although 



242 PESTALOZZI. 

not formally enunciated in these words by Pestalozzi, it 
is clearly deducible from his theory. 

We are now prepared to estimate the great and spe- 
cial service which Pestalozzi did to education. It is not 
his speculative theories, nor his practice (especially the 
latter), which have given him his reputation — it is that 
he, beyond all who preceeded him, demanded that para- 
mount importance should be attached to the elementary 
stages of teaching. " His differentia^''^ as Mr. Quick justly 
remarks, "is rather his aim than his method." He saw 
more -clearly than all his predecessors, not only what 
was needed, but how the need was to be supplied. Ele- 
mentary education, in his view, means, not definite in- 
struction in special subjects, but the eliciting of the 
powers of the child as preparative to definite instruc- 
tion, — it means that course of cultivation which the 
mind of every child ought to go through, in order to se- 
cure the all-sided development of his powers. It does 
not mean learning to read, write, and cipher, which are 
matters of instruction, but the exercises which should 
precede them. Viewed more generally, it is that as- 
siduous work of the j^upil's mind upon facts, as the 
building materials of knowledge, by which they are to 
be shaped and prepared for their place in the edifice. 
After this is done, but not before, instruction proper 
commences its systematic work. 

This principle may find its most general expression as 
a precept for the teacher thus: — Always make your pupil 
hegin his education ly dealing with concrete things and facts, 
never with abstractions and generalizations — such as definitions^ 
rules, and propositions couched in words. Things first, after- 
wards words — particular facts first, afterwards general 



ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 243 

facts, or principles. The child has eyes, ears, and 
fingers, which he can employ on things and facts, and 
gain ideas — that is, knowledge — from them. Let him, 
then, thus employ them. This employment constitutes 
his elementary education — the education which makes 
him conscious of his jDowers, forms the mind, and pre- 
pares it for its after work. 

We now see what Pestalozzi meant by elementary 
education. The next question is, how be proposed to 
secure it. Let us hear what he himself says: — "If I 
look back and ask myself what I have really done 
towards the improvement of elementary education, I 
find that in recognizing Observation {^Anschauung) as the 
absolute basis of all knowledge, I have established the 
first and most important principle of instruction; and 
that, setting aside all particular systems, I have en- 
deavored to discover what ought to be the character of 
instruction itself, and what are the fundamental laws 
according to which the natural education of the human 
race must be conducted." In another place he says, 
" Observation is the absolute basis of all knowledge. In 
other words, all knowledge must proceed from observa- 
tion, and must admit of being traced to that source." 

The word Anschauung, which we translate generally 
and somewhat vaguely by Observation, corresponds 
rather more closely to our word Perception. It is the 
mind's looking into, or intellectual grasping of, a thing, 
which is due to the reaction of its powers, after the 
passive reception of impressions or sensations from it. 
We see a thing which merely flits before our eyes, but 
we perceive it only when we have exhausted the action of 
our senses upon it, when we have dealt with it by the 



244 PESTALOZZI. 

whole mind. The act of perceptioD, then, is the act by 
wliich we know the object. If we use the term Observa- 
tion in this comprehensive sense, it may be taken as 
equivalent to Anschauung. 

Observation, then, according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon 
had said the same thing before him), is the absolute 
basis of all knowledge, and is, therefore, the prime agent 
in elementary education. It is around this theory, as a 
cenlre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's system revolves. 

The demands of this theory can only be satisfied by 
educating the learner's senses, and making him, by their 
use, an accurate observer — and this not merely for the 
purpose of quickening the senses, but of securing clear 
and definite perceptions, and this again with a view to 
lay firmly the foundation of all knowledge. The habit 
of accurate observation, as I have thus defined it, is not 
taught by Nature. It must be acquired by experience. 
Miss Martineau remarks: — "A child does not catch a 
gold fish in water at the first trial, however good his 
eyes may be, and however clear the water. Knowledge 
and method are necessary to enable him to take what is 
actually before his eyes and under his hand;" and she 
adds, "The powers of observation must be trained, and 
habits of method in arranging the materials presented 
to the eye [and the other sense-organs] must be acquired 
before the student possesses the requisites for under- 
standing what he contemplates." * 

It is scarcely necessary to show in detail what is 
meant by the education of the senses. This education 
consists in their exercise — an exercise which involves 

* See some excellent remarks on this subject In Miss Youman's essay 



EDFCATIOX OF THE SENSES. 245 

the development of all the elementary powers of the 
learner. Any one may see this education going on in 
the games and employments of the kindergarten, and 
indeed in the occupations of every little child left to 
himself. It is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the 
term, self-education. But it should also be made an 
object of direct attention and study, and lessons should 
be given for the express purpose of securing it. The 
materials for such lessons are of course abundant on 
every hand. Earth, sky, and sea, the dwelling-house, 
the fields, the gardens, the streets, the river, the forest, 
supply them by thousands. All things within the area 
of the visible, the audible, and the tangible, supply the 
matter for such object lessons, and upon these concrete 
realities the sense may be educated. Drawing, again, 
and moulding in clay, the cutting out of paper forms, 
building with wooden bricks or cubes to a pattern, are 
all parts of the education of the senses, and at the same 
time, exercises for the improvement of the observing 
powers. Then, again, measuring objects with a foot 
measure, weighing them in scales with real weights, 
gaining; the power of estimating the dimensions of 
bodies by the eye, and their weight by poising^ them in 
the hand, and then verifying the guesses by actual trial 
— these, too, are valuable exercises for the education of 
the senses. It is needless to particularize further, but 
who does not see that such exercises involve, not 
merely the training of the senses, but also the culture 
of the observing powers as well as the exercise of judg- 
ment, reasoning, and invention, and all as parts of ele- 

011 the culture of the observing powers of children in Second Book of 
Botany. New York. 



246 PESTALOZZI. 

mentary education ? * It is impossible to exaggerate 
their value and importance. 

But elementary education, rightly understood, ap- 
plies also to the initiatory stage of all definite instruc- 
tion. If we accept Pestalozzi's doctrine, that all 
education must begin with the near, the actual, the real, 
the concrete, we must not begin any subject whatever, 
in the case of children, with the remote, the abstract, 
and the ideal — that is, never Avith definitions, generali- 
ties, or rules; which, as far as their experience is con- 
cerned, all belong to this category. In teaching Physics, 
then, we must begin with the phenomena themselves; 
in teaching Magnetism, for instance, with the child's 
actual experience of the mutual attraction of the mag- 
net and the steel bar; Arithmetic must begin with 
counting and grouping marV)les, peas, etc., not with ab- 
stract numbers; Geometry, not with propositions and 
theorems, but with observing the forms of solid cubes, 
spheres, etc.; Geography, not with excursions into un- 
known regions, but with the schoolroom, the house, etc., 
thence proceeding concentrically; Language, too, with 
observing words and sentences as facts to be compared 
together, classified, and generalized by the learner him- 
self. In all these cases the same principle applies. The 
learner must first gain personal experience in the area 
of the near and the real, in which he can exercise his 
own powers; this area thus becomes the known which is 
to interpret the unknown, and thus the principle is 
established that the learner educates himself under the 
stimulation and direction of the educator. 

♦ I beg very strongly to recommend to all teachers, and to mothers who 
teach their children, a most valuable little book, written by the late 
Horace Grant, Exercises for the Improvement of the Senses. London. 



diestekweg's distinctions. 247 

You are now, I presume, aware of what Pestalozzi 
means by elementary educatiou; and you see that it 
resolves itself into the education which the lefirner gives 
himself by exercising his own powers of observation and 
experiment. The method of elementary education, is, 
therefore, the child's own natural method of gaining 
knowledge, guided and superintended by the formal 
teacher. 

This method has been, by Diester weg, an eminent 
German disciple of Pestalozzi, strongly distinguished 
from what he calls the Scientific method — that which is 
employed in higher instruction, in universities and col- 
leges, and is suitable for leai'ners whose minds are 
already developed and trained. The Elementary method, 
he says, is inductive, analytic, inventive (or heuristic, 
from Evpidfcco, I find out), developing. It begins with 
individual things or facts, lays these as the foundation, 
and proceeds afterwards to general facts or principles. 
The Scientific method, on the other hand, is deductive, 
synthetic, dogmatic, and didactic. It begins with defi- 
nitions, general propositions, and axioms, and proceeds 
downwards to the individual facts on which they are 
founded. 

I will give the substance of his further remarks on the 
subject. 

In learning by the Elementary method, we begin with 
individual things — facts or objects. From these we 
gain definite ideas, ideas naturally related to the condi- 
tion of our powers, or of our knowdedge, as being the 
result of our own personal experience. Such knowl- 
edge, as the product of our own efforts, is ours, in a 
sense in which no knowledge of others can ever become 



248 PESTALOZZI. 

ours; and, being ours, serves as the solid basis of the 
judgment and inductions that we are able to form, — the 
method is inductive because it begins with individual 
facts. 

The Scientific method, on the other hand, is deductive, 
because it begins with general principles, definitions, 
axioms, formulae, etc.; that is to say, with deductive 
propositions founded on facts which the learner is after- 
wards to know, not with facts which he already knows. 
The definitions, etc., are constructed for him, not by 
him. They are the ready-made results of the explora- 
tion of others, not the gains of his own. The deductive 
method proceeds from the summit to the foundation, 
from the unknown to the known; the inductive, from 
the foundation to the summit, from the known to the 
unknown. 

The mind dealing with individual things, and seeking 
to know them^ has no choice but to subject them to 
mental analysis. Every individual thing is an aggregate 
of elements, which can only be known by disintegration 
of the compound. Nature presents us with no element 
whatever alone and simple. The Elementary method, 
therefore, which requires the learner to perform this 
disintegration, is analytic. In other words, as resting on 
observation and experiment, it is the method of investi- 
gation. 

The Scientific method, on the other hand, is synthetic, 
It performs the analysis for the learner, and hands over 
to him the results. It directs him to re-construct some- 
thing, the form of which he has not seen, and tells him 
at every moment where and how he is to place the ma- 
terials. He does not necessarily know what he is con- 



ELEMENTARY VS. SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 249 

striicting until the complete form is before him. He 
satisfies the demands of the method, if he obeys the di- 
rections given him. He is not required to observe and 
experiment — i. <?., to investigate for himself. 

The Elementary method is inventive (heuristic). It 
places the learner on Uie path of discovery, and by en- 
couraging spontaneity and independence, gives free 
scope for the exercise of all his powers. It suggests to 
him new combinations of ideas already acquired, and the 
solution of difficulties which come in his way. 

The spirit of the Scientific method is opjyosed to invention. 
It didactically furnishes ready-made matter which is to 
be received, not questioned, and dogmatically prescribes 
obedience to fixed rules. It consequently checks spon- 
taneity, independence, and invention. 

The Scientific method, then, as thus interpreted, 
though adapted to students of high pretensions, is not 
adapted to those who are acquiring the elements of 
knowledge. The mistake, for the discovery of which 
we are indebted to Pestalozzi, is, that in our ordinary 
traditional teaching the Scientific method has, unfortun- 
ately, come to be employed in our schools for children 
where the Elementary method alone is natural and suit- 
ed to the circumstances. Pestalozzi's eminent claim to 
our gratitude consists in the service he has done to edu- 
cation by "turning the traditional car of school routine 
quite round, and setting it in a new direction." 

I conclude the exposition I have given of Pestalozzi's 
fundamental principles, by appending a summary of 
them. 

(1) The principles of education are not to be devised 
ab extra; they are to be sought for in human nature. 



250 PESTALOZZr. 

(2) This nature is an organic nature — a plexus of bod- 
il;/, intellectual, and moral capabilities, ready for de- 
velopment, and struggling to develop themselves. 

(3) The education conducted by a formal educator 
lias both a negative and a positive side. The negative 
function of the educator consists in removing impedi- 
ments, so as to afford free scope for the learner's self- 
development. The educator's positive function is to 
stimulate the learner to the exercise of his powers, to 
furnish materials and occasions for the exercise, and to 
superintend and maintain the action of the machinery. 

(4) Self-developraent begins with the impressions re- 
ceived by the mind from external objects. These im- 
pressions (called sensations), when the mind becomes 
conscious of them, group themselves into perceptions. 
These are registered in the mind as conceptions or ideas, 
and constitute that elementary' knowledge which is the 
basis of all knowledge. 

(o) Spontaneity and self-activity are the necessary- 
conditions under which the mind educates itself, and 
gains power and independence. 

(6) Practical aptness, or faculty, depends more on 
habits gained by the assiduous oft-repeated exercise of 
the learner's active powers, than on knowledge alone. 
Knowing and doing (wissen und hennen) must, however, 
proceed together. The chief aim of all education (in- 
cludng instruction) is the development of the learner's 
powers. 

(V) All education (including instruction) must be 
grounded on the learner's owni observation [Anschauung) 
at first hand — on his own personal experience. This is 
the true basis of all his knowledge. The opposite pro- 



HIS FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 25 1 

ceeding leads to empty, hollow, delusive word-knowledge. 
First the realit}^; then the symbol; first the thing, then 
the word; not vice versa. 

(8) What the learner has gained by his own observa- 
tion (Anschauimg), and, as a part of his persona) exper- 
ience, is incorj^orated with his mind, he knows, and can 
describe or explain in his own words. His competency 
to do this is the measure of the ac€uracy of his observa- 
tion, and, consequently, of his knowledge. 

(9) Personal experience necessitates the advance- 
ment of the learner's mind from the near and actual, 
with which he is in contact, and which he can deal with 
himself, to the more remote; therefore, from the con- 
crete to the abstract, from particulars to generals, from 
the known to the unknown. This is the method of ele- 
mentary education; the opposite proceeding — the usual 
proceeding of our traditional teaching — leads the mind 
from the abstract to the concrete, from generals to par- 
ticulars, from the unknown to the known. This latter 
is the Scientific method — a method suited only to the 
advanced learner, who, it assumes, is already trained by 
the Elementary method. 



PESTALOZZL-ANALYSIS, 



I. Pestalozzi not well known 228 

1. A self-sacrificing philanthropist 228 

2. An unpractical theorist 229 

3. Absorbed in elementary education alone. .230 

4. Yet the most influential of reformers 230 

II. His loork as a teacher 231 

1. Disadvantages: 

{a) Begun at 52, without training 231 

{h) In an uninhabitable house 232 

(c) Dirty, diseased, ignorant children .233 

{(l) Himself paymaster, servant, house-maid 233 

2. Reliance for conquest on a loving heart 233 

{a) First lesson for teachers 234 

3. Virtue from enlightenment of conscience 235 

{a) From the concrete to the abstract 237 

{b) Intellectual a part of moral training 237 

a " Evening Hours of a Hermit." 238 

4. Principles of his teaching 238 

(a) Powers develop in a natural order. 238 

(b) This order to be known and followed 238 

(c) "We develop faculties by exercising them 238 

(d) Nature exercises them on realities . . 238 

(e) We must exercise them on realities 238 

(/) From this experience, concentric circles. 239 

(g) Things before words, realities before symbols.. .239 

5. His application of these principles 339 

(a) Imperfect and inconsistent 239 

(b) Yet he ranks high among teacherK 240 

a He developed his pupils' faculties 240 

/3 He secured their interest 241 

A cardinal principle - .241 

252 



ANALYSIS. 253 

Y The central principle of teaching _241 

III. His Service to Elementary Education ___242 

1. His great principle: facts before principles 243 

{a) Primarj'- education based on observation 243 

{b) Hence the senses must be educated 244 

a Illustration of this education 245 

(c) The same principle applies to all teaching 246 

{d) Distinguished b}' Diesterweg from Scientific 

method 247 

a Induction vs. Deduction 247 

(5 Analysis vs. Sjmthesis 248 

y Inventiveness vs. Dogmatism 249 

IV. His fu ndamental principles _. 249 

1. Educational principles to be sought in human 

nature 249 

2. Human nature is organic .249 

3. The teacher removes obstacles, and stimulates 250 

4. Self-development begins with perception 250 

5. Spontaneity and self-activity necessary conditions 250 

6. Aptness depends more on exercise than on knowl- 

edge 250 

7. All education^founded on experience 250 

8. Power of explanation the measure of knowledge 251 

9. Scientific methods not applicable to beginners 251 



FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN SYSTEM 
OF ELEMENTARY EDUOATION.* 



Among the names of the great Reformers of Education, 
there is one which has not yet received that honor which 
it deserves, and with which I firmly believe the future 
will invest it. It is that of Friedrich Wilhelm August 
Froebel. His claims to distinction among educators are, 
however, now extensively allowed in his native land, as 
well as in Switzerland, Holland, France, the United 
States, and partially even in England. These claims 
are numerous, and of great importance. While many 
others have labored with greater or less success at the 
superstructure of Education, to him belongs the special 
credit of having earnestly devoted himself to the founda- 
tion. While others have taken to the work of Educa- 
tion their own pre-conceived notions of what that work 
should be, Froebel stands consistently alone in seeking 
in the nature of the child the laws of educational action 
— in ascertaining from the child himself how we are to 
educate him. 

Further, Frcebel is the first teacher to whom it has 
occurred to convert what is usually considered the 
waste steam of childish activities and energies into the 
means of fruitful action; to utilize what has hitherto 
been looked upon as unworthy of notice; and, moreover, 
to accomplish this object, not only without repressing 

* A Lecture delivered at the College of Preceptors, on the 25th Feb., 1874, 
254 



S'rcebel's personal history. 255 

the natural free spirit of chilclliood, but by making that 
free spirit the very instrument of his purpose. 

In laying before, you the development of Froebel's 
principles of elementary education, I propose to connect 
with this development a 'sketch of the personal history 
of the man. We shall in this way learn to appreciate 
not only the principles at which he ultimately arrived, 
but the mental process which led to them. 

Froebel was born April 21, 1782, at Oberweissbach, 
in the principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. His 
mother died when he was so young that he never even 
remembered her; and he was left to the care of an igno- 
rant maid-of-all-work, who simply provided for his 
bodily wants. His father, who was the laborious pastor 
of several parishes, seems to have been solely occupied 
with his duties, and to have given no concern whatever 
to the development of the child's mind and character 
beyond that of strictly confining him within doors, lest 
he should come to harm by straying away. One of his 
principal amusements, he tells us, consisted in watching 
from the window some workmen who were repairing 
the church, and he remembered long afterwards how he 
earnestly desired to lend a helping-hand himself. The 
instinct of construction, for the exercise of which, in 
his system, he makes ample provision, was even then 
stirring within him. 

As years went on, though nothing was done for his 
education by others, he found opportunities for satisfy- 
ing some of the longings of his soul, by wandering in 
the woods, gathering flowers, listening to the birds, or 
to the wind as it swayed the forest trees, watching the 
movements of all kinds of animals, and laying up in his 



256 PRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

mind the various impressions then produced, as a store 
for future years. He was, in fact, left as much to edu- 
cate himself through nature as was the Mary Somerville 
of later times. 

Not until he was ten years of age did he receive the 
slightest regular instruction. He was then sent to 
school, to an uncle who lived in the neighborhood. 
This man, a regular driller of the old, time-honored 
stamp, had not the slightest conception of the inner 
nature of his pupil, and seems to have taken no pains 
whatever to discover it. He pronounced the boy to be 
idle (which, from his point of view, was quite true) and 
lazy (which certainly was not true) — a boy, in short, 
that you could do nothing with. And, in fact, the 
teacher did nothing with his pupil, never once touched 
the chords of his inner being, or brought out the music 
they Avere fitted, under different handling, to produce. 
Froebel was indeed, at that time, a thoughtful, dreamy 
child, a very indifferent student of books, cordially 
hating the formal lessons with which he was crammed, 
and never so happy as when left alone with his great 
teacher in the woods. The result was, that he left school, 
after four years, ahiiost as ignorant as when he entered 
it, carrying with him as the produce of his labor a con- 
siderable quantity of chaff, but very little corn. The 
corn consisted in some elementary notions of matliemat- 
ics, a subject which interested him throughout his life, 
and which he brought afterwards to bear on the lessons 
of the Kindergarten. 

Circumstances, which had proved so adverse to his 
development in his school experiences, took a favorable 
turn in the iivxt step of his life. It was necessary for 



CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 257 

him to earn his bread, and we next find liim a sort of 
appientice to a woodsman in the great Thnringian for- 
est. Here, as he afterwards tells us, he lived some 
years in cordial intercourse with nature and mathemat- 
ics, learniijg even then, though unconsciously, from the 
teaching he received, how to teach others. His daily 
occupation in the midst of trees led him to observe the 
laws of nature, and to recognize union and unity in ap- 
parently contradictory phenomena. Here, too, he re- 
flected on his previous course of education; and formed 
very decided opinions on the utter worthlessness of the 
ordinary school-teaching, as never having reached what 
was in himself, and, therefore, in his view, failing alto- 
gether to be a true culture of the mind and of the man. 
His life as a forester, which, though ceitainly not with- 
out great influence on his mental character, was not to 
be his final destination, ended when he w^as about 
eighteen years of age. 

He now went to the University of Jena, where he at- 
tended lectures on natural history, physics, and mathe- 
matics; but, as he teils us, gained little from them. 
This result was obviously due to the same dreamy specu- 
lative tendency of mind which characterized his earlier 
school-life. Instead of studying hard, he speculated on 
unity and diversity, on the relation of the whole to the 
parts, of the parts to the whole, etc , continually striving 
after the unattainable and neglecting the attainable. 
This desultory style of life was put an end to by the 
failure of means to stay at the University. 

For the next few years lie tried various occupations, 
ever restlessly tossed to and fro by tiie demands of the 
outer life, and not less distracted by the consciousness 



258 FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

that liis powers had not yet found what he calls their 
'* centre of gravity." At last, however, they found it. 
While enp-aored in an architect's office at Frankfort, he 
formed an acquaintance with the Rector of the Model 
School, a man named Gruner. Gruner saw the capabil- 
ities of Froebel, and detected also his entire want of in- 
terest in the work that he was doing; and one day sud- 
denly said to him: "Give up your architect's business; 
you will do nothing at it. Be a teacher. We want one 
now in the school; you shall have the place." 

This was the turning point in Froebel's life. He ac- 
cepted the engagement, began work at once, and tells us 
that the first time he found himself in the midst of a 
class of 30 or 40 boys, he felt that he was in the element 
that he had missed so long — " the fish was in the water." 
He was inexpressibly happy. This ecstasy of feeling, 
we may easily imagine, soon subsided. In a calmer 
mood he severely questioned himself as to the means by 
which he was to satisfy the demands of his new position. 
He found the answer, he says, by descending into him- 
self, and listening to the teachings of nature respecting 
life, mind, and being — lessons already theoretically 
know^n, but now for the first time, correlated with prac- 
tice. "My hitherto peculiar development, self-cultiva- 
tion, self -teaching^" he says, '' as well as my observation 
of nature and of life, now found their proper place." 
But he keenly felt, at the same time, the effects of his 
desultory manner of study. He was neither instructed 
in knowledge nor in teaching, but he now resolved to 
make up for his deficiencies in both respects. About 
this time he met with some of Pestalozzi's w^ritings, 
which so deeply impressed him that he determined to go 



HIS SYSTEM DEVELOPS. 259 

to Yverdiim and study Pestalozzism on the spot. He 
accomplished his purpose, and lived and worked for two 
years with Pestalozzi. His experience at Yverdiim im- 
pressed him with the conviction that the science of Edu- 
cation had still to draw out from Pestalozzi's system 
those fundamental principles Avhich Pestalozzi himself 
did not comprehend. *' And therefore," says Schmidt,* 
"this general disciple of Pestalozzi supplemented and 
completed his system by advancing from the point 
which Pestalozzi had reached through pressure from 
without to the innermost conception of man, and arriv- 
ing at the thought of the true development and the con- 
dition of the true culture of mankind." Feeling still his 
want of positive knowledge, Froeble spent the next two 
or three years of his life at the Universities of Got- 
tingen and Berlin. It was now, while he was for the 
first time earnestly engaged in study, that his views on 
Education gradually gained consistency and form. 
"Our greatest educators," he says, "even Pestalozzi 
himself not excepted, appear to me to crudely, empiri- 
cally, capriciously, and, therefore, unscientifically to 
allow themselves to be led away from nature and nature's 
l9,ws; they do not appear, indeed, to recognize, honor, 
and cultivate the divinity of science." 

It would only be tedious to relate the various ^re- 
liminary experiences by which Froebel — sometimes with 
few, sometimes with many pupils — sometimes under 
favorable, at other times under unfavorable circum- 
stances — pursued his course, until the moment when at 
Blankenburg, near Rudolstadt, he established, about 
the year 1840, the school to which he first gave the 

* Geschichte der Fddagogik, iv, 284. 



260 FRCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

name of Kindergarten. In this name lie wished to em- 
body two of his favorite theoretical notions: — the one, 
that education, as culture, has to do with children as 
human plants, which are to be surrounded with circum- 
stances favorable to their free development, and to be 
trained by means suited to their nature; and the other, 
that a school for little children should have attached to 
it a garden, in which they may exercise their natural 
taste for flowers, and be not only the observers but the 
cultivators of plants. Froebel, as well as his disciples 
of the present day, protest against the application of 
the name School to the Kindergarten, which is, in their 
view, a place for the development of the activities and 
capabilities of children before the usual school age 
begins. The Kindergarten proper is intended for 
children of between three and seven years of age. Its 
purpose is thus briefly indicated by himself: — "To take 
the oversight of children before they are ready for 
school life; or exert an influence over their whole being 
in correspondence with its nature; to strengthen their 
bodily powers; to exercise their senses; to employ the 
awakening jnind; to make them thoughtfully acquaint- 
ed with the worl'j of nature and of man; to guide their 
heart and soul in a right direction, and lead them to 
the Origin of all life and to union with Him." 

You will have observed already that in this pro- 
gramme there is no mention made of reading, writing, 
and arithmetic; of grammar, geography, and history; 
of rules, precepts, or general propositions; not a word 
about books, nor even of instruction at all in its ordi- 
nary sense; yet you will also have observed that there 
is ample provision for activity and energy of various 



THE KINDEEGAKTEN :SOT A SCHOOL. 261 

kinds — activity of limbs, activity of the senses, activity 
of the mind, heart, and of the religious instinct. It is 
in this immense field of natural energies that the Froe- 
belian idea "lives, moves, and has its being." You will 
further see that the carrying out of this programme in- 
volves something very different in spirit and essence 
from the ordinary course of an English infant school, to 
which children are often carried merely " to get them 
out of the way." 

Having said at the commencement of this lecture that 
Froebel as' an educator begins at the very beginning, I 
ought now to add that in his great work, " On the Edu- 
cation of Man," he takes into consideration. the circum- 
stances of the child during the period which precedes 
the Kindergarten age, and gives many valuable hints to 
g'uide the mother, who is Nature's deputy and helper, 
for the first three years of its life. As, however, to 
describe his views and plans in relation to that period 
would occupy us too long, I confine myself to the Kind- 
ergarten age. In Frcebel's opinion, the mother who con- 
sults the true interests of her child, will, when he is 
three years old, give him up to the governess of the 
Kindergarten. In this respect he differed from Pesta- 
lozzi, who thought that the mother, as the natural 
educator of the child, ought to retain the charge of him 
up to his sixth or seventh year. It is easy to see that 
if this opinion be acted on, the edncation of the child 
will be restricted to the experience of the family circle. 
According to Froebel, this basis is too narrow. The 
family circle does not generally afford a sufficient scope 
for the development of those activities which, in their 
combination, constitute life. A system of education, 



262 FEOEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

therefore, founded on this narrow basis, does not really 
prepare the child for that intercommunion and constant 
intercourse with his fellowmen of which life, broadly 
interpreted, consists. Frosbel, moreover, doubts, with 
much reason, whether mothers generally are qualified 
for the task assigned them by Pestalozzi, and points out 
that, if they are not, the child must suffer from their in- 
competence, even if he lose nothing through neglect 
occasioned by the demands of the household upon their 
time and strength. He, therefore, insists that in order 
to furnish children with opportunities for displaying and 
developing all their natural capabilities, they must be 
brought together in numbers. The mutual action and 
reaction of forces and activities thus necessitated pre- 
sents, in fact, a miniature picture of the larger life lo 
which they are destined. The passions, emotions, suf- 
ferings, desires of our common humanity, have here both 
scope and occasion for their fullest manifestation; while 
the intellectual powers, under tlie stimulus of inexhausti- 
ble curiosity and of aptitude for imitation and invention, 
are excited to constant action. At the same time the 
bodily powers — hands, feet, muscles, senses — under the 
influence and impulse of companionship, are more ac- 
tively exercised, and the health of the constitution 
thereby promoted, while a larger and better opportunity 
is supplied for learning the^ resources of the mother- 
tongue. The Kindergarten, therefore, for its full 
development, requires the bringing together of children 
in numbers; in order that they may not only be edu- 
cated, but educate themselves and each other; and 
requires, moreover, the surrender, on the mother's part, 
of the charge which she is, as a rule, unfitted to dis- 



HIS CENTRAL IDEA. 263 

charge, into the hands of those who understand, and are 
trained for, the work. This, then, is one of the cases 
in which Froebel takes a crude and unconditioned notion 
of Pestalozzi's, and organizes it into a clear and consist- 
ent rule of action. 

But we are still only standing on the circumference 
of Froebel's expansive idea of education. Let ns now 
enter within the circle, and make our way to the centre. 
In order to do tliis effectuall}', let us form a conception 
of the genesis of the idea — an idea not less distinguished 
by its originality as a theory than by its far-extending 
practical issues. 

Let us imagine to ourselves Froebel, after profoundly 
studying human nature in general, both in books and 
life, and minutely observing and studying the nature of 
children; in possession, too, of a large theoretical knowl- 
edge of education, as a means for making the best of 
that nature; and, at the same time, impressed with a 
sorrowful conviction, founded pa''tly on his own experi- 
ence, that most of what is called education, is not only 
unnatural, but anti-natural, as failing to reach the inner 
being of the child, and even counteracting and thwart- 
ing its spontaneous development, — let us, I say, imagine 
Froebel, thus equipped as an observer, taking his place 
amidst a number of children disporting themselves in 
the open air without any check upon their movements. 

After looking on the pleasant scene awhile, he breaks 
out into a soliloquy: — "What exuberant life! What 
immeasurable enjoyment ! What unbounded activity ! 
What an evolution of physical forces ! What a har- 
mony between the inner and the outer life ! What 
happiness, health, and strength ! Let me look a little 



264 FECEBEL AND THE KINDERGAKTEN. 

closer. What are these children doing? The air rings 
nnisically with their shouts and joyous Jaughter. Some 
are running, jumping, or bounding along, witli eyes 
like the eagle's bent upon its prey, after the ball which 
a dexterous hit of the bat sent iiying among them; 
otliers are bending down towards the ring filled with 
marbles, and endeavoring to dislodge them from their 
position; others ai'e running friendly races with their 
hoops; others again, w^ith aruis laid across each other's 
shoulders, are quietly w^alking and talking together upon 
some matter in which the}^ evidently have a common 
interest. Their natural fun gushes out from eyes and 
lips. I hear what they say. It is simply expressed, 
amusing, generally intelligent, and often even witty. 
But there is a small group of children yonder. They 
seem eagerly intent on some subject. What is it? I 
see one of them has taken a fruit from his pocket. He 
is showing it to his fellows. They look at it and admire 
it. It is new to them. They wish to know more about 
it — to handle, smell, and taste it. The owner gives it 
into their hands; they feel and smell, but do not taste 
it. They give it back to the owner, his right to it being 
generally admitted. He bites it, the rest looking 
eagerly on to watch the result. His face shows that he 
liket^ the taste; his eyes grow brighter with satisfaction. 
The rest desire to mcke his experience their own. He 
sees their desire, breaks or cuts the fruit in pieces, which 
he distributes amc-ng them. He adds to his own pleas- 
ure by sharing in theirs. Suddenly a loud shout from 
some other part of the ground attracts the attention of 
the group, which scatters in all directions. Let me now 
consider. What does all this manifold movement — this 



WHAT HE LEARNED FROM CHILDREN'S PLAY. 265 

exhibition of spontaneous energy — really mean? To 
me it seems to have a profouDcl meaning. 

It means — 

"(1) That there is an immense external clevelopmeDt 
and expansion of energy of various kinds — physical, 
intellectual, and moral Limbs, senses, lungs, tongues, 
mm els, hearts, are all at work — all co-operating to pro- 
duce the general effect. 

"(2) That activity — doing — is the common character- 
istic of this development of force. 

"(3) That spontaneity — absolute freedom from out- 
ward control — appears to be both impulse and law to 
the activity. 

"(4) That the harmonious combination and interac- 
tion of spontaneity and activity constitute the happi- 
ness which is apparent. The will to do prompts the 
doing; the doing reacts on the will 

"(5) That the resulting happiness is independent of 
the absolute value of the exciting cause. /V^it of stick, 
a stone, an apple, a marble^ a hoop, a top, as soon as 
they become objects of interest, call out the activities 
of the Vv'hole being quit<^ as effectually as if they were 
matters of the greatest intrinsic value. It is the action 
upon them — the doing something with them — that in- 
vests them with interest. 

''(6) Til at this spontaneous activity generates happi- 
ness because the result is gained by the children's own 
efforts, without external interference. What they do 
themselves aud for themselves, involving their own 
personal experience, and therefore exactly measured by 
their own capabilities, interests them. What another, 
of trained powers, standing on a different platform of 



266 FECEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

advancement, does /or them, is comparatively uninterest- 
ing. If such a person, from whatever motive, inter- 
feres with their spontaneous activity, he arrests the 
movement of their forces, quenches their interest, at 
least for the moment; and they resent the interference. 

*'Such, then, appear to be manifold meanings of the 
boundless spontaneous aclivily that I witness. But 
what name, after all, must I give to the totality of the 
phenomena exhibited before me ? I must call them 
Play. Play, then, is spontaneous activity ending in the 
satisfaction of the natural desire of the ehikl for ple^is- 
ure — for happiness. Play is the nattiral, the appropriate 
business and occupation of the child left to his own resources. 
The child that does not play, is not a perfect child. He 
wants something — sense-organ, limb, or generally what 
we imply by the term health — to make up our ideal of 
a child. The healthy child plays — plays continually — 
cannot but play. 

" But has this instinct for play no deeper significance ? 
Is it a|3pointed by the Supreme Being merely to fill up 
"time? — merely to form an occasion for fruitless exer- 
cise? — merely to end in itself ? No ! I see now that it 
is the constituted means for the unfolding of all the 
child's powers. It is through play that he learns the 
use of his limbs, of all his bodily organs, and with this 
use gains health and strength. Through play he comes 
to know the external world, the physical qualities of 
the objects which surround him, their motions, action, 
and re-action upon each other, and the relation of these 
phenomena to himself; a knowledge which forms the 
basis of that which will be his permanent stock for life. 
Through play, involving associateship and combined 



DEFINITION OF PLAY. 267 

action, he begins to recognize moral relations, to feel 
that he cannot live for himself alone, that he is a mem- 
ber of a community, whose rights he must acknowledge 
if his own are to be acknowledged. In and through 
play, moreover, he learns to contrive means for securing 
his ends; to invent, construct, discover, investigate, to 
bring by imagination the remote near, and, further, to 
translate the language of facts into the language of 
words, to learn the conventionalities of his mother- 
tongue. Play, then, I see, is the means by which the 
entire being of the child develops and grows into power, 
and, therefore, does not end in itself. 

"But an agency which effects results like these, is an 
education agency; and Play, therefore, resolves itself into 
education; education which is independent of the formal 
teacher, which the child virtually gains for and by him- 
self. This, then, is the outcome of all that I have ob- 
served. The child, through the spontaneous activity of 
all his natural forces, is really developing and strength- 
ening them for future use; he is working out his own 
education. 

"But what do T, who am constituted by the demands 
of society as the formal educator of these children, learn 
from the insight I have thus gained into their nature ? 
I learn this — that I must educate them in conformity 
with that nature. I must continue, not supersede, the 
course already begun; my own course must be based 
upon it. I mu^^t recognize and adopt the princi^^les in- 
volved in it, and frame my laws of action accordingly. 
Above all, I must not neutralize and deaden that spon- 
taneity which is the mainspring of all the machinery; I 
must rather encourage it, while ever opening new fields 



268 FKCEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

for its exercise, and giving it new directions. Play, 
spontaneous play, is the education of little children; but 
it is not the whole of their education. Their life is not 
to be made up of play. Can I not then even now grad- 
ually transform their play into work, but work which 
shall look like play? — work which shall originate in the 
same or similar impulses, and exercise the same energies 
as I see employed in their own amusements and occupa- 
tions ? Play, however, is a random, desultory education. 
It lays the essential basis; but it does not raise the 
superstructure. It requires to be organized for this 
purpose, but so organized that the superstructure shall 
be strictly related and conformed to the original lines 
of the foundation, 

^'' I see that these children delight in movement; — they are 
always walking or running, jumping, hopping, tossing 
their limbs about, and, moreover, they are pleased with 
rhythmical movement. I can contrive motives and 
means for the same exercise of the limbs, which shall 
result in increased physical power, and consequently in 
health — shall train the children to a conscious and 
measured command of their bodily functions, and at the 
same time be accompanied by the attraction of rhythmic- 
al sound through song or instrument. 

''^ I see that they use their senses ; but merely at the acci- 
dental solicitation of surrounding circumstances, and 
therefore imperfectly. I can contrive means for a def- 
inite education of the senses, which shall result in 
increased quickness of vision, hearing, touch, etc. I can 
train the purblind eye to take note of delicate shades of 
color, the dull ear to appreciate minute differences of 
sound. 



ORGANIZED PLAY IS EDUCATION. 269 

^^ I see that thetj ohserve ; but their observations are for 
the most part transitory and indefinite, and often, 
therefore, comparatively unfruitful. I can contrive 
means for concentrating their attention by exciting curi- 
osity and interest, and educate them in the art of 
observing. They will thus gain clear and defi^nite per- 
ceptions, bright images in the place of blurred ones, 
will learn to recognize the difference between complete 
and incomplete knowledge, and gradually advance from 
the stage of merely knowing to that of knowing that 
they know. 

'' I see that they invent and construct ; but often awkwardly 
and aimlessly. I can avail myself of this instinct, and 
open to it a definite field of action. I shall prompt them 
to invention, and train them in the art of construction. 
The materials I shall use for this end will be simple; 
but in combining them together for a purpose, they will 
employ not only their knowledge of form, but their im- 
agination of the capabilities of form. In various ways 
I shall prompt them to invent, construct, contrive, imi- 
tate, and in doing so develop their nascent taste for 
symmetry and beauty. 

" And so in respect to other domains of that child- 
action which we call play, I see that I can make these 
domains also my own. I can convert children's activi- 
ties, energies, amusements, occupations, all that goes by 
the name of play, into instruments for my purpose, and, 
therefore, transform play into work. This work will be 
education in the true sense of the term. The conception 
of it as such I have gained from the children themselves. 
They have taught me how I am to teach them." 

And now Froebel descends from the imaginary plat- 



270 FRCEBEL AKD THE KlKDERGAETEN. 

form where he has been holding forth so long. I have 
endeavored, in what has preceded, to give you as clear 
a notion as I could of the genesis of his root-idea; and 
I may say, in passing, that it is vrell for you that I, and 
not Froebel himself, have been the expositor; for ajiy- 
thing more cloudy, involved, obscure, and mystical than 
Froebel's own style of writing can hardly be conceived. 
It has been my task to keep the clouds out of sight, and 
admit upon the scene only the genial light which breaks 
out from between them. 

Having thus brought before you what I may call 
Frcebel's statical theory of the education of little chil- 
dren of from three to seven years of age, I now pro- 
ceed to describe the means by which it was made 
dynamical — that is, exhibited in practice. But before 1 
do so, I will add to the particulars of his life, that after 
founding the Kindergarten at Blankenburg, and carry- 
ing it on for some years, he left it to establish and 
organize others in various parts of Germany, and at 
last died at Liebenstein, June 21, 1852. Thus passed 
away a man of remarkable insight into human nature, 
and especially into children's nature, — of wonderful 
energy of character when once roused to action, — of 
all-prevading philanthropy — a man, I repeat, to whom 
alone is due the fruitful and original conception of 
availing himself, as a teacher, of the spontaneous activi- 
ties of children as the means of their formal education, 
and, therefore, of laying on this foundation the super- 
struction of their physical, intellectual, and moral life. 

And now I must endeavor to give some notice of the 
manner in which Froebel reduced his theory to practice. 
In doing this, the instances I bring forward, must be 



THE THEORY IX PRACTICE. 271 

considered as typical. If you admit — and you can 
hardlj do otherwise — the reasonableness of the theory, 
as founded on the nature of things, you can hardly 
doubt that there is some method of carrying it out. 
Now, a method of education involves many processes, 
all of which must represent more or less the principles 
which form the basis of the method. It is quite out of 
my power, for want of time, to describe the various 
processes whi<;h exhibit to us the little child pursuing 
his education by walking to rhythmic measure, by gym- 
nastic exercises generally, learning songs by heart and 
singing them, practising his senses with a definite pur- 
pose, observing the properties of objects, counting, get- 
ting notions of color and form, drawing, building with 
cubical blocks, modelling in wax or clay, braiding slips 
of various colored paper after a pattern, pricking or 
cutting forms in pax^er, curving wire into different 
shapes, folding a sheet of paper and gaining elementary 
notions of geometry, learning the resources of the 
mother-tongue by hearing and relating stoi'ies, fables, 
etc., dramatizing, guessing riddles, working in the gar- 
den, etc., etc. These are only some of the activities 
naturally exhibited by young children, and these the 
teacher of young children is to employ for his purpose. 
As, however, they are so numerous, I may well be ex- 
cused for not even attempting to enter minutely into 
them. But there is one series of objects and exercises 
therewith connected, expressly devised by Frcebel to 
teach the art of observing, to which, as being typical, 
I will now direct your attention. He calls these objects, 
which are gradually and in orderly succession intro- 
duced to the child's notice, Gifts — a pleasant name, 



272 FECEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN. 

which is, however, a niere accident of the system: they 
might equally well be called by any other name. As 
introductory to the series, a ball made of wool, of say 
of scarlet color, is placed before the baby. It is rolled 
along before him on the table, thrown along the floor, 
tossed into the air, suspended from a string, ilnd used 
as a pendulum, or spun round on its axis, or made to 
describe a circle in space, etc. It is then given into his 
hand; he attempts to grasp it, fails; tries again, suc- 
ceeds; rolls it along the floor himself, tries to throw it, 
and in short, exercises every power he has upon it, al- 
ways pleased, never wearied in doing something or other 
with it. This is play, but it is play which resolves itself 
into education. He is gaining notions of color, form, 
motion, action and re-action, as well as of muscular 
sensibility. And all the while the teacher associates 
words with things and actions, and by constantly em- 
ploying words in their proper sense and in the immedi- 
ate presence of facts, initiates the child in the use of 
his mother-tongue. Thus, in a thousand vvays, the scar- 
let ball furnishes sensations and perceptions for the sub- 
stratum of the mind, and suggests fitting language to 
express them; and even the baby appears before us as 
an observer, learning the properties of things by per- 
sonal experience. 

Then comes the first Gift. It consists of six soft 
woolen balls of six different colors, three jDrimary and 
three secondary. One of these is recognized as like, 
the others as unlike, the ball first known. The laws of 
similarity and discrimination are called into action; 
sensation and perception grow clearer and stronger. I 
cannot particularize the numberless exercises that are 



THE "gifts." 273 

to be got out of the various combinations of these six 
balls. 

The second Gift consists of a sphere, cube, and cylin- 
der made of hard wood. What was a ball before, is 
now called a sphere. The different material gives rise 
to new experiences; a sensation, that of hardness, for 
instance, takes the place of softness; while varieties of 
form suggest resemblance and contrast. Similar ex- 
periences of likeness and unlikeness are suggested by 
the behavior of these different objects. The easy roll- 
ing of the sphere, the sliding of the cube, the rolling 
as well as sliding of the cylinder, illustrate this point. 
Then the examination of the cube, especially its sur- 
faces, edges, and angles, which any child can observe 
for himself, suggest new sensations and their resulting 
perceptions. At the same tim e, notions of space, time, 
form, motion, relativity in general, take their place in 
the mind, as the unshaped blocks which, when fitly com- 
pacted together, will lay the firm foundation of the 
understanding. These elementary notions, as the very 
groundwork of mathematics, will be seen to have their 
use as time goes on. 

The third Gift is a large cube, making a whole, which 
is divisible into eight small ones. The form is recog- 
nized as that of the cube before seen; the size is differ- 
ent. But the new experiences consist in notions of 
relativity — of the whole in its relation to the parts, of 
the parts in their relation to the whole; and thus the 
child acquires the notion and the names, and both in 
immediate connection with the sensible objects, of 
halves, quarters, eighths, and of how many of the small 
divisions make one of the larger. But in connection 
J 



274 FROEBEL AXD THE KINDERGARTEX. 

with the third Gift a new faculty is called forth — Imag- 
ination, and with it the instinct of construction is 
awakened. The cubes are mentally transformed into 
blocks: and with them building commences. The con- 
structive faculty suggests imitation, but rests not in 
imitation. It invents, it creates. Those eight cubes, 
placed in a certain relation to each other, make a long 
seat, or a seat with a back, or a throne for the Queen; 
or again, a cross, a doorway, etc. Thus does even play 
exhibit the characteristics of art, and " conforms (to nse 
Bacon's words) the outward show of things to the 
desires of the mind;" and thus the child, as I said 
before, not merely imitates, but creates. And here, I 
may remark, that the mind of the child is far less inter- 
ested in that which another mind has embodied in ready 
prepared forms, than in the forms which he conceives, 
and gives outward expression to, himself. He wants to 
employ his own mind, and his whole mind, upon the 
object, and does not thank you for attempting to deprive 
him of his rights. 

The fourth, fifth, and sixth Gifts consist of the cube 
variously divided into solid parallelopipeds, or brick- 
shaped forms, and into smaller cubes and prisms. Ob- 
servation is called on with increasing strictness, relativity 
appreciated, and the opportunity afforded for endless 
manifestations of constructiveness. And all the while 
impressions are forming in the mind, which, in due time, 
will bear geometrical fruits, and fruits, too, of aesthetic 
culture. The dawning sense of the beautiful, as well as 
of the true, is beginning to gain consistency and power. 

I cannot further dwell on the numberless modes of 
manipulation of which these objects are capable, nor 



OBJECTIONS REFUTED. 275 

enter further into the groundwork of principles on 
which their efficacy depends. 

It is needless to say that various objections have been 
made to Froebel's method, especially by those whose 
ignorance of the laws of mental development disqualifies 
them, in fact, for giving an opinion on it at all, and also 
by others, whose earnest work at various points ot the 
superstructure so absorbs their energies that they have 
none to spare for considering the foundation. But even 
among those who have considered the working of mental 
laws, though in many cases from t'ne standpoint of a 
favorite theory, there are some who still doubt and 
object. I will attempt to deal with one or two of their 
objections. Tt is said, -for instance, without proof, that 
we demand too much from little children, and, with the 
best intentions, take them out of their depth. This 
might be true, no doubt, if the system of means adopted 
had any other basis than the nature of the children; if 
we attempted theoretically, and without regard to that 
nature, to determine ourselves what they can and what 
they cannot do; but when we constitute spontaneity as 
the spring of action, and call on them to do th at, and 
that only, which they can do, which they do of their 
own accord when they are educating themselves, it is 
clear that the objection falls to the ground. The child 
who teaches himself, never can go out of his depth ; the 
work he actually does is that which he has strength to 
do; the load he carries cannot but be fitted to the 
shoulders that bear it, for he has gradually accumulated 
its contents by his own repeated exertions. This in- 
creasing burden is, in short, the index and result of his 
increasing powers, and commensurate with them. The 



276 FRCEBEL AND THE KINDEEGA.RTEN. 

objector in this case, in order to gain even a plausible 
foothold for his objection, must first overthrow the rad- 
ical principle, that the activities, amusements, and occu- 
pations of the child, left to himself, do indeed constitute 
his earliest education, and that it is an education which 
he virtually gives himself. 

Another side of this objection, which is not unfre- 
quently presented to us, derives its plausibility from the 
assumed incapacity of children. The objector points to 
this child or that, and denounces him as stupid and in- 
capable. Can the objector, however, take upon himself 
to declare that this or that child has not been made 
stupid even by the very means employed to teach him? 
The test, however, is a practical one: Can the child 
play ? If he can play, in the sense which I have given 
to the word, he cannot be stupid. In his play he em- 
ploys the very faculties which are required for his 
formal education. "But he is stupid at his books." If 
this is so, then the logical conclusion is, that the books 
have made him stupid, and you, the objector, who have 
misconceived his nature, and acted in direct contradic- 
tion to it, are yourself responsible for his condition. 

" But he has no memory. He cannot learn what I 
tell him to learn." No memory! Cannot learn! Let us 
put that to the test. Ask him about the pleasant holi- 
day a month ago, when he went nutting in the woods. 
Does he remember nothing about the fresh feel of the 
morning air, the joyous walk to the wood, the sunshine 
which streamed about his path, the agreeable compan- 
ions with w^hom he chatted on the way, the incidents of 
the expedition, the climb up the trees, the bagging of 
the plunder? Are all these matters clean gone out of 



OBJECTIONS REFUTED. 277 

his mind? "Oh no, he remembers things like these." 
Then he has a memory, and, a remarkably good one. 
He remembers, because he was interested; and if you 
wish him to remember your lessons, you must make 
them interesting. He will certainly learn what he takes 
an interest in. 

I need not deal with other objections. They all 
resolve themselves into the category of ignorance of the 
nature of the child. When public opinion shall demand 
such knowledge from teachers as the essential condition 
of their taking in hand so delicate and even profound 
an art as that of training children, all these objections 
will cease to have any meaning. 

As I have doubtless appeared throughout this lecture 
as not only the expositor but the advocate of Froebel's 
principles, it is only right to say that this has arisen 
from the fact that, without knowing it, I have been 
myself for many years preaching from the same text. 
My close acquaintance with Frcebel's theory, and es- 
pecially with his root-idea, is comparatively recent. But 
when I had studied it as a theory, and witnessed some- 
thing of its practice, I could not but see at once that 1 
had been throughout an unconscious disciple, as it were, 
of the eminent teacher. The plan of my own course of 
lectures on the Science and Art of Education was, in 
fact, constructed in thought before I had at all grasped 
the Frcebelian idea; and was, in that sense, independent 
of it. But every one who hears my lectures — which are 
founded on the natural history of the child — must be at 
once aware that Frcebel's notions and mine are virtually 
the same.* 
*!See First Lecture, page 17. 



278 FRffiBEL AND THE KINDERGAETEN. 

The Kindergarten is gradually making its way in 
England, without the achievement as yet of any eminent 
success; but in Switzerland, Holland, Italy, and the 
United States, as well as in Germany, it is rapidly 
advancing. Wherever the principles of education, as 
distinguished from its practice, are a matter of study 
and earnest thought, there it prospers. Wherever, as 
in England for the most part, the prnctical alone is con- 
sidered, and where teaching is thought to be " as easy 
as lying," any system of education founded on psycho- 
logical laws must be tardy in its progress. , 

I should be glad to think that I have by this lecture 
either kindled an interest hitherto unfelt in the Kinder- 
garten, or supplied those who felt the interest before, 
wnth arguments to justify it. 



FRffiBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN-ANALYSIS. 



I. JEVodbeCs Peculiar Place among Educators 254 

1. His work at the foundation instead of superstructure. 254 

2. His laws derived from nature of the child 254 

3. The first to utilize what was thought an obstacle 255 

II. His Personal History - -255 

1. Childhood and youth: 

{a) No home-training 255 

{h) Educated himself through nature 256 

(c) At school learned little but arithmetic 256 

(rt) His life as a forester _ 257 

(e) At the University of Jena 257 

2. Manhood: 

{a) From architect to teacher 258 

ih) Two years with Pestalozzi 259 

(c) More University life 259 

{d) His later career and death 270 

ex Apprehends the divinity of science 259 

III. His first Kindergarten at Blankenburg 260 

1. Principles: 
{a) Children to be cultured like plants 260 

(b) A real garden attached to the school 260 

(c) A Kindergarten not to be called a School 260 

a INIeant for children from 3 to 7 260 

(3 None of the usual instruction 261 

{d) The mother to yield to the Kindergarten 261 

a Experience of the family circle too narrow 262 

fi Mothers generally unqualified 262 

y Children need to be assembled 262 

IV. The Central Idea of his system 263 

His observation of children at play 263 

279 



280 FR<EBEL AND THE KIXDEKGARTEN. 

Their enjoyment of exercise .264 

Their effective language 264 

Their curiosity 264 

Their recognition of the rights of others. 264 

His interpretation of what he observed 265 

Immense development of energy 265 

Activity the common characteristic 265 

Spontaneity both the impulse and the law 265 

Happiness from this spontaneity and activity. 265 

This happiness dependent on the activity 265 

That they enjoy what they do for themselves .266 

His definition of Play ..266 

The appropriate occupation of the child 266 

The constituted means for unfolding powers 267 

Play resolves itself into education 267 

Primary education must be Organized Play 268 

Children delight in movement 268 

They use their senses 269 

They observe, but imperfectly 269 

They invent and construct. 269 

V. Meaiujor 'putting the idea into 'practice 270 

The preliminary scarlet ball 272 

Notions of color, form, motion, action, etc 272 

Practice in use of language 272 

The First Gift: six woollen balls 273 

Laws of similarity and discrimination 273 

Sensation and perception developed ..273 

The Second Gift : sphere, cube, and cylinder. .273 

Hardness and softness 273 

Shape, space, time, motion 273 

Foundation laid for mathematics 273 

The Third Gift : a large cube divided 273 

The whole and its parts 274 

Imagination and construction 274 

Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Gifts, etc ..274 

VI. Ohjectiom to Fro&beVs Method .275 

That too much is demanded of children .275 



ANALYSIS. 281 

But it is all based on spontaneity 275 

The self-taught child not overburdened 27& 

That some children are stupid 276 

Not if they can play. 276 

That they have no memory ,276 

But they remember things out of school. 277 

VII. FroebeVs Method is Mr. Payne's. 27S 



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